In defence of Picasso

‘Well, they can’t cancel Picasso.’ That was my optimistic take some months ago when a friend in the art world said: ‘Watch out, they’re coming for him next.’

It doesn’t really matter that, like Paul Johnson – late of this parish – I don’t feel unadulterated admiration for Pablo Picasso’s work. The late period seems to me a commercial art factory that would have made Andy Warhol blush. But the fact he was a cast-iron genius is beyond doubt, proven by the fact that no one who came after him could go around him. Like Stravinsky in music, you couldn’t continue afterwards as though nothing had happened; Picasso had happened, and for a long time that was that.

Everybody always knew that the great Spaniard was not a great human being – and with the 50th anniversary of his death this month it appears that those facts are going to be more than rehearsed. Yes, he loved women but did not always treat them well. He could be drunk and despotic. I don’t think anybody within living memory has been surprised by these facts.

I remember George Weidenfeld telling me of a writers’ and artists’ congress that took place in Russia after the last war. By George’s telling, the dinner was made more chaotic – and amusing – by Picasso getting so steamingly drunk that he stripped to his trousers and stormed among his fellow diners informing them that he wanted to leave a baby in Moscow. Perhaps I am less shockable than some people, but I do not find this at all shocking. I think it amusing. Anyway, he was a genius and geniuses are allowed to behave worse than other people.

This last point is a contentious one, but I am willing to defend it.