Back to Berger
John Haber
think he's saying.
Picasso had two hindrances to greatness, and they both took over once
he lost the collective labor of Cubism. First, as a virtuoso, Picasso
was too tempted not to labor. This is expressed in his clinging to a
tenet of the early Romantics, that the individual matters above his
works. In the work itself, it leads to rapid, arbitrary changes in
style that leave behind Cubism's focus on art as process rather than
object.
Second, as a Spaniard, and thus from a society moving in one burst
from agrarian feudalism to modernity, he idealized the primitve. This
leads to works that put on a pedestal even the subjects of his anger,
such as the disasters of war.
Berger's description of Cubism owes a lot to Schapiro on Cezanne. (I
could argue that he's always derivative, as in his TV episode for
"Ways of Seeing" that with considerable clarity and intelligence
translates Walter Benjamin's "The Word of Art ...." into image for a
wider public.) Still, he's great at it, putting big ideas that took
others a book and getting it into a page. It's stirring. When I
first read his evocation of the white spaces in Cezanne's landscape
watercolors, I wrote in the margins a line from Spense: "That all the
woods may echo and their answer ring."
When I first read the book, too, I just got annoyed at how dismissive
Berger then becomes. You don't want to agree or disagree at length
when he writes of an artist as simply a career or a phenomenon. It
actually mimics the "move" he's deriding -- elevating the genius above
his works. On the other hand, I too had little interest in Picasso
after Cubism.
The big retrospective, followed by the show on Picasso's women, turned
me around totally. I still know the guy tossed off garbage less like
a virtuoso than a broken assembly line. (Since Krauss's defense of
the copy as a postmodern impulse, no wonder his rep has revived.) And
yet, conversely, I became more receptive to the ideas I've just
summarized.
Postmodern discourses have encouraged one to look for contradictory,
ridiculous romantic metaphors and idealization of the primitive." One
has Griselda Pollock or Laura Mulvey ripping wonderfully into this,
through notions of the westerner as "tourist" and the male "gaze."
Now I'd still say he's wrong in not giving the artist his due by just
looking at works. But I'd also wonder about his ideas in a different
way. When an artist has conflicted feelings, as a male westerner will
confronted with "primitive" impulses he can't grasp, he no longer
stands comfortably above his work. The power of the things one
attacks is what exposes an artist or viewer to feeling and thought.
The man who painted Les Demoiselles isn't just the powerful gaze
encompossing it all. By looking he's exposed himself, foregrounding
his own gaze and its vulnerability, like the edgy melons that could be
knife edges applied directly to his penis. It is only the critic who
takes the anger and fear and projects it to the work's comfortable
meaning.
I have to realize that Berger did write all the ways back in 1965. He
didn't have the retrospective. Works, especially if they need some
selection to make sense, were hidden in private; while the artist was
psing in all magazines. In fact, Berger was working in a climate
that, he notes, didn't even take Cubism seriously. So at least he was
honestly making a contribution, with ideas that still make me think.
That Cubist section alone is still something else.
John (on the primitive: www.haberarts.com/brancusi.htm
on Les Demoiselles: www.haberarts.com/gpollock;
on Picasso's women: www.haberarts.com/dewing;
on Mulvey: www.haberarts.com/mulvey.htm;
all but the first are pretty dumb)
Ariane
On Tue, 30 Mar 1999, John Haber wrote:
> Got around at last to rereading much of it last night. Here's what I
> think he's saying.
>
> Picasso had two hindrances to greatness, and they both took over once
> he lost the collective labor of Cubism. First, as a virtuoso, Picasso
> was too tempted not to labor. This is expressed in his clinging to a
> tenet of the early Romantics, that the individual matters above his
> works. In the work itself, it leads to rapid, arbitrary changes in
> style that leave behind Cubism's focus on art as process rather than
> object.
=== Two points. Who is Berger to proclaim this or that a success or
failure with respect to Picasso in the first place? A self-appointed
guru? Or one who rides on the coat-tails of the authority of academia?
Second, you are right that Picasso saw his life as the process
(romanticism) and as such he laboured intensively. The sheer weight of
his output proves beyond a doubt that Picasso's life was labour
intensive.
> > Second, as a Spaniard, and thus from a society moving in one burst
> from agrarian feudalism to modernity, he idealized the primitve.
=== This had less to do with him being a Spaniard than with his desire to
be the iconoclast in early 20th century Europe. Much the same reasoning
as Heidegger who went back to the Greeks so as the "remake pgilosophy
anew". It was a way to remake Western Art and of course, the facts bear
this out.......Primitivism => Cubism
> This
> leads to works that put on a pedestal even the subjects of his anger,
> such as the disasters of war.
>
> Berger's description of Cubism owes a lot to Schapiro on Cezanne. (I
> could argue that he's always derivative, as in his TV episode for
> "Ways of Seeing" that with considerable clarity and intelligence
> translates Walter Benjamin's "The Word of Art ...." into image for a
> wider public.) Still, he's great at it, putting big ideas that took
> others a book and getting it into a page. It's stirring. When I
> first read his evocation of the white spaces in Cezanne's landscape
> watercolors, I wrote in the margins a line from Spense: "That all the
> woods may echo and their answer ring."
>
> When I first read the book, too, I just got annoyed at how dismissive
> Berger then becomes.
=== I found that it degenerates the further one reads.....
> You don't want to agree or disagree at length
> when he writes of an artist as simply a career or a phenomenon. It
> actually mimics the "move" he's deriding -- elevating the genius above
> his works. On the other hand, I too had little interest in Picasso
> after Cubism.
> The big retrospective, followed by the show on Picasso's women, turned
> me around totally. I still know the guy tossed off garbage less like
> a virtuoso than a broken assembly line. (Since Krauss's defense of
> the copy as a postmodern impulse, no wonder his rep has revived.) And
> yet, conversely, I became more receptive to the ideas I've just
> summarized.
>
> Postmodern discourses have encouraged one to look for contradictory,
> ridiculous romantic metaphors and idealization of the primitive." One
> has Griselda Pollock or Laura Mulvey ripping wonderfully into this,
> through notions of the westerner as "tourist" and the male "gaze."
>
> Now I'd still say he's wrong in not giving the artist his due by just
> looking at works. But I'd also wonder about his ideas in a different
> way. When an artist has conflicted feelings, as a male westerner will
> confronted with "primitive" impulses he can't grasp, he no longer
> stands comfortably above his work. The power of the things one
> attacks is what exposes an artist or viewer to feeling and thought.
>
> The man who painted Les Demoiselles isn't just the powerful gaze
> encompossing it all. By looking he's exposed himself, foregrounding
> his own gaze and its vulnerability,
=== I agree here.....
> like the edgy melons that could be
> knife edges applied directly to his penis. It is only the critic who
> takes the anger and fear and projects it to the work's comfortable
> meaning.
>
> I have to realize that Berger did write all the ways back in 1965. He
> didn't have the retrospective. Works, especially if they need some
> selection to make sense, were hidden in private; while the artist was
> psing in all magazines. In fact, Berger was working in a climate
> that, he notes, didn't even take Cubism seriously. So at least he was
> honestly making a contribution, with ideas that still make me think.
> That Cubist section alone is still something else.
=== Well said. I disagree with your ideas on romanticism and the
primitive but hey, la diversite, c'est un bon gout.
a bientot,
A.