The Success and Failure of Picasso

The only period in which Picasso consistently developed as an artist was the period of Cubism between 1907 and 1914. And this period, as we shall see later, is the great exception in Picasso’s life. Otherwise he has not developed. In whatever way one applied the coordinates, it would be impossible to make a graph with a steady ascending curve applicable to Picasso’s career. Yet this would be possible in the case of almost every other great painter from Michelangelo to Braque. The only exceptions would be those painters who lost their vigour as they grew older. But this is not true of Picasso. So Picasso is unique. In the life work of no other artist is each group of works so independent of those which have just gone before, or so irrelevant to those which are to follow.

You can get some idea of this discontinuity in Picasso’s work by looking at three paintings — painted within two years — and then comparing them with two typical Braques, painted at the same time.

13 Picasso. The Coiffure. 1954

14 Picasso. Jacqueline with Black Scarf. 1954

15 Picasso. Seated Woman. 1955

16 Braque. Studio, VIII. 1954–5

17 Braque. The Bird and its Nest. 1955–6

Picasso’s discontinuity is often cited as a proof of his vitality, of the amazing way in which he has stayed young. This begs the question of why he has stayed young and avoids all the tragic implications of his restlessness, but the observation is true enough. Picasso has stayed young. He has stayed young because he has not developed consistently. He has not developed consistently because (apart from the brief Cubist interlude) he has not been open to explanations, suggestions, or arguments. Instead he has had to rely more and more exclusively upon the mystery of his own prodigious creativity.

I hope that I have now made it clear how Picasso’s being a child prodigy has increased and prolonged the effect and influence of his early years. The power of his genius, in which he had to trust, became a barrier against outside influences, and even a barrier against any conscious plans of his own. He submitted to its will — in an eternal present. He stayed young.

But there is also another reason why the prodigious nature of his gifts ties him closely to Spain. The mystery of his powers is of a kind that Spain recognizes. In Spain Picasso’s spirit — as opposed to his art — would become immediately comprehensible.

Lorca, who was born near Granada eight years after Picasso, wrote an essay on the subject of the creatively possessed. It is called ‘Theory and Function of the Duende’.⁶ The duende is a kind of undiabolic demon. Lorca quotes an Andalusian singer as saying ‘All that has dark sounds has duende’. Then Lorca goes on:

These dark sounds are the mystery, the roots thrusting into the fertile loam known to all of us, ignored by all of us, but from which we get what is real in art.

As Lorca goes on defining the duende, he hints at why historically the concept is peculiarly Spanish. He makes a distinction between the duende and a muse, and the duende and an angel. For him a muse represents the spirit of classicism leading on to enlightenment — as, say, in Poussin. An angel represents lucidity leading to Renaissance humanism — as, say, in Antonello da Messina. Both, he claims, are despised in Spain, because neither challenges death.

The duende, on the other hand, does not appear if it sees no possibility of death … in idea, in sound, or in gesture, the duende likes a straight fight with the creator on the edge of the well. While angel and muse are content with violin or measured rhythm, the duende wounds, and in the healing of this wound which never closes is the prodigious, the original in the work of man.

The duende is born of hope:

The appearance of the duende always presupposes a radical change of all forms based on old structures. It gives a sensation of freshness wholly unknown, having the quality of a newly created rose, of miracle, and produces in the end an almost religious enthusiasm.

Yet it has to lead to fatality. Its most spectacular appearance is in the bullring, where death is certain.

In every country death has finality. It arrives and blinds are drawn. Not in Spain. In Spain they are lifted. Many Spaniards live between walls until the day they die, when they are taken out to the sun. A dead person in Spain is more alive when dead than is the case anywhere else…

The duende is the inspired cry of defiance of those on the rack. It is the impatience to have done, to break free from all material beginnings which appear never to develop: it is the attempt to transcend those beginnings by abandoning everything to the moment. And in certain circumstances the duende guarantees art.