The Success and Failure of Picasso

The several manners I have used in my art must not be considered as an evolution or as steps towards an unknown ideal of painting. All I have ever made was made for the present, and with the hope that it will always remain in the present. I have never taken into consideration the spirit of research. When I have found something to express, I have done it without thinking of the past or the future.… I have never made trials or experiments. Whenever I had something to say, I have said it in the manner in which I have felt it ought to be said. Different motives inevitably require different methods of expression. This does not imply either evolution or progress, but an adaptation of the idea one wants to express and the means to express that idea.

Here is the secret of the extraordinary intensity of Picasso’s vision. He has been able to see and imagine more suffering in a single horse’s head than many artists have found in a whole crucifixion.

9 Picasso. Head of a Horse. 1937

10 Rubens. Christ Crucified Between Two Thieves. 1620

He gives himself up utterly to the present idea or moment. The past, the future, plans, cause and effect — all are abandoned. He submits himself totally to the experience at hand. All that he has done or achieved only counts in so far as it affects what he is at that moment of submission. This is the way in which — ideally at least — Picasso works. And it is very close indeed to the way in which the prodigy submits to the force that plays through him.

Such is the positive result of the mystery at the centre of which Picasso found himself as a child. By respecting this mystery he has become the most expressive artist of our time. But there was also a negative result — which may have had as much to do with his childhood success as with the mystery. Picasso denies the power of reason. He denies the causal connexion between searching and finding. He denies that there is such a thing as development in art. He hates all theories and explanations. It would be understandable if he ignored all these intellectual considerations when it came to respecting and responding to the mystery of his own powers. But he goes further than this. He hates reasoning in general and despises the interchange of ideas.

There ought to be an absolute dictatorship, a dictatorship of painters, a dictatorship of one painter — to suppress all who have betrayed us, to suppress the cheaters, to suppress the tricks, to suppress mannerisms, to suppress charms, to suppress history, to suppress a heap of other things. But common sense always gets away with it. Above all let’s have a revolution against that! The true dictator will always be conquered by the dictatorship of common sense — and perhaps not!

This is partly a joke. But nevertheless it reveals an uneasiness. He wants everything to be beyond argument. He wants to be beyond the reach of evidence.

They should put out the eyes of painters [he has said], as they do to goldfinches to make them sing better.

It is as though, in principle, he is frightened of learning. (It is perhaps relevant to note in passing that he is one of the very few modern painters who has never taught.) He is prepared to learn a new skill — pottery, lithography, welding — but as soon as he has learnt the technique, he needs to overthrow and disprove its laws. From this need comes his marvellous power of improvisation and his wit, which respects nothing. Yet the need, however exhilarating the results, still betrays a certain defensiveness. I cannot explain this. I can only tentatively suggest a possibility. It seems to me odd that the story of Picasso’s father giving his palette and brushes to his son, aged fourteen, and swearing never to paint again, has never been considered more seriously. If it is true, it is likely to have been a deeply formative experience for the young Picasso.

11 Picasso. Portrait of Artist’s Father. 1895

12 Picasso. Portrait of Artist’s Mother. 1895