[THIS IS probably the first time in the…]

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THIS IS probably the first time in the history of painting that an exhibition contains the painter's name twice in the title. Appropriately, the name is Pablo Picasso. His adult life and painting career covered the first three-quarters of our century; and if there are still humans alive next century, they will almost certainly still regard Picasso as He was and is, as the critic John Berger points out in his brilliant study The Success and Failure of Picasso, one of the most famous people (not only painters) who has His fame and wealth were greater than any other artist's in the history of the world. His signature on a piece of paper invested it with a monetary value which the In fact, it was Picasso's financial success which gave birth to this exhibition. The death duties on his vast estate were met by the handing over to the French tax authorities of 500 or so of the paintings that he had kept himself. They are soon to be housed in a new permanent museum So the collection is not of the best-known of Picasso's work, nor (many would think) of the best. There does not seem to have heen anv particular reason why these were remained with him for the rest of his painting, its materials, and its style other painters, in terms of what and animal figures in Picasso's paintBOB SUTCLIFFE reviews 'Picasso's Picassos', an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, South Bank, London (until. 11th October)

the most notable painter of the 20th century.

ever lived.

Chief Cashier of the Bank of England would envy.

in Paris, and are meanwhile touring the world.

the paintings which Picasso chose to keep.

But the collection is uniquely representative of the whole span of his long and prodigiously prolific career. It is possible to see aspects of Picasso as a painter which are not so striking from individual paintings.

One of these is the immense range of his visual imagery, in spite of the repetition of similar subjects.

To understand as much as any viewer can what Picasso was trying to convey inrougn us pane, you Lia nintina. would need to know something of African art, of Greek and Roman mythology, and of the paintings of earlier artists, so many of which Picasso produced caricatures of.

You would, however, hardly need to know anything about any other twentieth century painter, Picasso's style (or rather styles, since there are so many) is quite unlike that of other painters. And, as Berger says, he was never part of any echnol excent for the one he helped to invent - cubism.

At that time (1907-14) Picasso and Georges Braque worked, as Braque put it,, to produce a revolu "liked mountaineers roped together tion in the language of painting Analogy Berger's claim that cuoism was form (the only one in art) of dialectical materialism the fusion of Courbet's materialism with Cezanne's dialectic - should be treated, in my opinion, as no more than an analogy. But his insistence on the revolutionary significance of cubism is surely right. Even though, unlike some other painters of the movement, Picasso quickly ceased to paint in pure cubist style, the influence of cubism career. And it has done the same for is acceptahle as the subject matter of I TRITICI Above Mandolin, 1910; below, Guernica ings were possible after the libThe famous distortions of human eration of painting style produced by cubism.

One of Berger's conclusions which this exhibition helps to confirm is that after 1914, the high point of cubism. Picasso's fame and wealth grew as his artistic influence declined.

Scarcely any later painting would have been possible without the innovations of Picasso and his cubist colleagues before 1914. Yet if Picasso had died then, probably nothing which happened in painting subsequently would have been any different As we can see clearly in this exhibition, Picasso did not become Woman with stiletto, after David's 'Death of Marat', 1931 less original, nor unable to paint good or even great paintings. But he did become a very individual painter, using his art to express his obsessions, desires and pain. This led to the sentimentality of the "blue period" whose paintings seem very dated, and then to the increasing, almost obsessional, use of sex as a subject matter of his paintings and, more especially, drawings.

Picasso perhaps dra mona than any other artist to liberate sex as an artistic subject - sex explicitly as physical pleasure or sex as humour, as opposed to implicit and repressed sex which was more characteristic of 19th (and early 20th) century painting.

Form of sexism

I'm not sure whether Mrs Mary Whitehouse has attacked the Picasso exhibition as she has attacked the National Theatre over Waterloo Bridge - but she certainly, ought to. Though perhaps she is less scandalised because, in Berger's words, Picasso abstracts sex from society and returns it to nature"

The positive aspects of the sensuality of Picasso's paintings are combined with a form of sexism. He seems obsessed with the need for sex to take place between strong masculine men (sometimes transformed into minotaurs or centaurs, just to beef up the masculinity) and all-human young women who, when they are not physically idealised, are distorted by the shrinking of their heads and the enlargement of their breasts, and who are always "supine and passive.

In his paintings of the 1930s and 1940s, the theme of pleasure (especially sexual pleasure is joined by that of pain - often expressed through the images derived from his native Spain, from which Picasso had all his life been an exile Hideous events As Berger so illuminatingly says, these images are the way that Picasso reacted, in a very personal and introspective manner, to the hideous political events which went on around him in Spain, France and Germany. As with sex, "he abstracts fear and pain from history and returns them to a protesting nature"

In the paintings from this period you will look in vain for any overt political statement or ever analogy. But Picasso discovered i symbolic language (bull-fighting which he used to express his owr personal reactions to the cruelty anc pain of others.

It is for this reason that it is iron ic, perhaps, that one of these paint ings - 'Guernica' - has become the most celebrated political painting o our age.

Democratic enough?

It is not in this exhibition, bui some of its precursors are. It wai painted on a commission from the Spanish Republican government fo its stand at an exhibition in Pari: after the ghastly bombing of the town of Guernica by Nazi bomber flying for Franco.

The political history of this paint ing is not over, since Picasso's execu tors are in the process of deciding whether Spain has now become democratic enough for it to be returned to Spain from New York where it hangs in the Museum o Modern Art.

Neither. in Guernica, nor in any picture in this exhibition, nor (hard ly) in any of Picasso's sparse writing and sayings, do we get much idea o his politics.

Probably he was a little drawn te the anarchism of some of his friend: in the cubist movement early in thi century But it did not convert him into publicly political person. That happ ened only when he joined the Frencl Communist Party in 1945. It was ai act perhaps more of political naivet! than of cynicism Artistic But the Stalinists in Paris and Moscow were glad to make use of hi vast international fame for their ow! ends, and encouraged him to dray millions of doves of peace, whil banning his painting as decadent an bourgeois.

Thus, whether wittingly or unwit tingly, Picasso ended his life collabor ating meekly with the darkest force of artistic (as well as all other kind of) reaction - forces which the bes and most original of his painting continue to do something to under mine.

If, like me, you are not a grea lover even of Picasso's most signifi cant paintings, you will gain fron this exhibition an unrivalled vision o the work of one of the major artisti geniuses of the 20th century. An maybe also, like me, you will admir the boldness of all his work, an enjoy some of its sensuality and wit Still life on pedestal table, 1931

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Socialist Organiser, Thursday 20 August, 1981 Page 13