Race to be Radical
When Picasso was asked his opinion of Matisse's 1907 painting "Blue Nude," Picasso said, "If he wants to paint a woman, let him paint a woman; if he wants to make a design, let him make a design. This is between the two." Not one to offer a simple, "It's not me," Picasso took the idea and ran with it.
There is a difference, Picasso argues, between art and design. Art is not design. Style should be incidental, not intentional, not “by design.” Artistic design was controversial at the time. Ironically (given the tendentious tone of Picasso's assessment of the Matisse), in the same year of 1907, Picasso would paint his "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," a more stylized painting than the "Blue Nude," by Matisse. Indulged by his dealer and close associates as a conceit of the budding master, it may well have been meant as satire, a parody of modernist developments, and wasn't shown to the public until 1914.
There is far more of what is generally recognized as design in Picasso's painting of "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon” than the crude, indeed, intentionally crude, production of the Fauves. Matisse eventually took stylized art far beyond, perfecting the art of design in his 1952, "Blue Nude," one-color lithograph series. With the African-Iberian phase, beginning in 1907, Picasso developed the art of design concept to his satisfaction, moving on thereafter to the next stage in his evolution, as was usual for him.
If design is not art, what art is, therefore, must be conspicuously absent from design. It is the artist's touch which is absent from design. Design is intended to be communicated, to a master printer, for independent commission. It was the artist in Picasso that objected to the sensationalism of recent trends in art, the use of the equivalent of the megaphone in art, to the point of causing of a public disturbance for self-promotion. Picasso, unlike his cohorts, never endorsed the shock-the-bourgeoisie program. Shockingly provocative, Matisse's “Blue Nude” is artistically disappointing in many ways.
There is an anecdote about a well-known artist of established historical importance, who was an old friend of Picasso, until he ventured into absolute, non-objective abstraction. Upon being asked by the nouveau abstractionist his opinion of his latest painting, Picasso is said to have asked his old friend his age, implying his new work was childish, or perhaps that he was entering upon second childhood. Picasso could be blunt when not his usual, taciturn, self.
Picasso early on detected the program of propaganda driving the new art. "By design" means, in popular parlance, a scheme, a plot, an ulterior motive, or, given an association of like-minded individuals, a conspiracy. Picasso refused to play the role of modern artist, much as he declined to join the Communist Party, or sign the Surrealists' manifesto. He was, on occasion, a party animal -never a political animal.
That is not to say Picasso was not complicit in the vast, left-wing conspiracy that is Modernism. Picasso was more anarchist than socialist. He went his own way. Nietzsche had remarked that the will to a system is a lack of integrity. Even so, Picasso could not be part of any system, at least, not for long. He, himself, that is to say, his Ego, precluded the need for a system.
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