Manet and Picasso - The London Magazine

Manet: Portraying Life,
The Royal Academy
26   January   –   14   April   2013

Becoming Picasso, Paris 1901
The Courtauld Gallery
14   February   –   26   May   2013

Two exciting tales from formidable practitioners have starred on the London stage this season, potentially changing and altering our view of the genius of Manet and Picasso. For such exhibitions are part of an on going critical argument, essays in visual form. And for this spectator at least not only were visiting these shows exhilarating experiences, but they further    amplified    my    appreciation    of    their    singular    achievements,    and    moreover   suggested   some   comparisons   between   two   influential   innovators    whose   presence   is   still   tantalisingly   significant   and   indeed,   embedded   in    our collective visual consciousness.

Edouard Manet (1832-1883) is casting an agreeably ever-longer shadow over the history of nineteenth-century Western painting and the art of Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) is inescapable. The chronological accidents of their lifespans mean that between them in many ways they encapsulate the trajectory   of   what   we   mean   by   modern   painting;;   the   painting   as   Baudelaire    referred to it, of modern life. Both were intensely autobiographical painters, were studio painters, although Manet was to work out doors later in life. Picasso of course lived into his nineties and was certainly one of    the    most    prolific    artists    in    all    of    art’s    history,    as    well    as    a    polymath:    sculptor, painter, ceramicist, draughtsman, printmaker and even, perhaps not too fanciful to say, in the casual yet purposeful profusion of objects strewn about the vast houses he inhabited in later life, an installation artist.

He is probably the most written about and exhibited artist in art’s history: Picasso and war, Picasso and peace, Picasso and portraits, Picasso and the   Old   Masters,   Picasso   and   still   life,   Picasso   and   the   studio,   Picasso   and    cubism (the cataclysmic art-changing invention of his, roped together with Braque), Picasso and neo-classicism and of course in France there are no fewer than four museums devoted exclusively to his work. His personal life    was    complex    and    as    he    pointed    out    himself,    his    love    life    –    a    serial    lover,    one    muse    succeeding    another    –    was    startlingly    visible    in    his    art.    Picasso    made    his    fortune    through    his    art;;    Manet    was    cushioned    by    the    comfort of his family fortune, and led in outward mode the life of the haute bourgeoisie. But each painted according to their own lights. It is curious that Manet so passionately craved acceptance, particularly by the Salon, and never exhibited with his fan club, the Impressionists, in the course of their sequence of eight non-Establishment outings.

And    another    thing    in    common:    a    passionate    admiration    for    Velázquez.    This was brilliantly outed by modern historians in the masterly series of exhibitions of Manet and his idol in Paris, Madrid and New York in 2002-2003, in the context of the nineteenth-century French admiration for   Spanish   art   from   indeed   Velázquez   to   Goya.   As   a   young   man   Manet    visited the great museums of western Europe: Holland, Italy, Germany, Austria;;   later   he   was   absorbed   by   Spain.   Picasso   was   immensely   erudite    in the images of others, and Republican Spain made him the honorary director   of   the   Prado;;   as   he   famously   said   about   the   work   of   other   artists,    I don’t borrow I steal. And his inventive, imaginative, teasing variations on   Velázquez’s   Las Meninas,   certainly   the   most   famous   painting   –   and    perhaps the most famous painting of an artist’s studio, however fanciful, in art   history   –   give   permanent   form   to   his   meditations   on   the   master.

Manet lived in Paris, and holidayed at the seaside, the holidays of the upper middle classes in the nineteenth-century, and Picasso of course was himself an émigré to France, yet never lost his national characteristics nor his   passion   for   his   native   country,   and   lived   for   significant   portions   of   his    life outside the city.

Manet is evidently now routinely referred to as the father of modern art, seemingly having usurped Cézanne in the paternal stakes, and in the past three decades seminal shows have been devoted to his work. There have been great catalogues and exhibitions: thirty years ago the major retrospective   at   the   Grand   Palais,   Paris   and   the   Metropolitan,   New   York;;    ten    years    ago    Manet    together    with    Velázquez    at    the    Prado,    Madrid;;    the    Musée    d’Orsay,    Paris    and    the    Metropolitan,    New    York;    two    years    ago    Manet, subtitled the man who invented modernity, again at the Musée d’Orsay,    Paris.    There    have    been    endless    studies    as    well,    and    specialist    shows,   Manet   on   flowers,   Manet   and   the   sea.   Manet   is   seen   as   embodying    Paris;;    as    exemplifying    the    modern    age,    his    paintings    of    railway    stations    emblematic. How did this syphilitic flâneur, a dandy of the upper middle classes, his mother the daughter of a diplomat and a goddaughter of a Swedish prince, his father a judge, come to such prominence? Ironically the man who longed to be part of the establishment is now at its heart, his work resonating and reverberating in our contemporary world. His story too has oddities, he married a Dutch piano teacher who had come to teach the family music, and thereby may or may not have become stepfather to his father’s illegitimate son, Leon Koella Leonhoff, who was also his most frequently portrayed model, appearing in over a dozen of his stepfather’s paintings. And he may too have been in love with his sister in law to be, Berthe Morisot, muse, model and fellow painter.

The major show of portraits by Manet at the Royal Academy this season has drawn some grudging reviews, from critics irritated that it is not the retrospective blockbuster some early publicity may have suggested. The compilation does indeed have some work that Manet himself would probably never have expected nor wanted to see publicly exhibited: sketches,    unfinished    paintings,    problematic    work.    But    there    is    a    school    of thought, perhaps almost religious in its attitude towards relics, that anything the master may have touched is of aesthetic or intellectual value. And there is a point: failures or near misses can be as fascinating to the spectator, casting light as they do on the creative process and indeed on the sheer craft involved, as the work regarded both by its creator and posterity as    near    finished    as    may    be.    Equally    looking    at    the    young    Picasso,    the    ceaseless restless experimentation is beguiling, the failures as fascinating as the successes.

That    experimentation,    expanding    the    visual    language,    is    the    defining    characteristic too of the Manet exhibition. Half of Manet’s work is portraits of real people as themselves. We can identify the ‘real’ people who posed for his best known painting, Déjeuner sur l’herbe;;    Manet’s brother is part of the art world’s most controversial picnic and    Olympia    is    the    model    Victorine    Meurent,    herself    also    a    well    known    painter;;    indeed    she    exhibited    successfully    in    the    Salon,    when    Manet was excluded. Even the charming pensive young woman at A Bar at the Folies-Bergère is named. But these are not portraits, more invented genre scenes calling with subtle drama on various genres of art history.    Moreover    the    Musée    d’Orsay    masterpieces    are    considered    too    fragile   to   travel   although   some   will   be   on   view   in   the   Manet   and   Venice    show    in    Venice    this    spring    and    summer:    more    importantly    they    are    not    part of the argument here, although the National Gallery’s oil sketch, Music in the Tuileries Gardens, is perhaps one of the most familiar and admired of Manet’s paintings. This elaborate effervescent crowd scene is,    rather    like    Courbet’s    magnificent    The Artist’s Studio, both replete with ‘real’ portraits and an allegory of modern society. Baudelaire suggested    modernity    was    ‘the    transient,    the    fleeting,    the    contingent’.    Certainty had vanished: restlessness was paramount, and at once eternal verities questioned. Social norms were breaking down, unconventional behaviour more public, conventional beauty eschewed for character, for the individual, and stereotypes questioned.

Another   thing   both   of   these   recent   examinations   of   specific   aspects   of   these    artists’ work have in common is that neither compilation is a relentless march of masterpieces. In 1901 Picasso was a restless nineteen year old, precocious, almost supernaturally energetic, emotional, and certainly away   from   home:   poor   and   yet   on   the   verge   of   his   first   great   independent    critical and commercial success with his exhibition at the seminal and courageous    dealer,    Ambroise    Vollard    (1866-1939).       It    was    the    start    of    a    long and satisfying relationship, lasting until the dealer’s death. Indeed Vollard   was   to   commission   the   Vollard   Suite   from   Picasso   in   the   1930s,   a    complete set of which was acquired by the British Museum and shown in its entirely in 2012. His self-portrait Yo Picasso, is almost a declaration of intent: watch out world, Picasso is coming.

Art exhibitions are narratives, telling stories through three-dimensional objects, continually arranged and rearranged by art historians and curators. What is so exciting about these two specialist, oblique looks at these household names of art is that familiar as we may feel ourselves to be through hundreds of exhibitions and publications here is something newly illuminating. It reminds us that Manet was an integral part of Paris in its transition   to   modernity;;   and   it   was   Paris   that   was   the   catalyst   that   changed    Picasso.

Human beings and human incident are always at the centre of their art. It is Yo Manet, as well as Yo Picasso, in these new examinations of the self in   art:   here   is   it   not   as   others   see   us,   but   as   Picasso   and   Manet   saw   –   and    depicted   –   the   other.   Picasso   figures   very   large   in   his   own   art,   and   stars    of the current show are indeed his two early self-portraits, bursting with energetic   vitality;;   he   was   to   go   on   to   show   himself   time   and   again   as   the    archetypal artist, solipsistically self absorbed as he absorbed and observed the world around him. Manet, altogether more world weary, rarely painted himself, only a handful of self- portraits are known. But above all both took their very life, their own and others, as their subject. However far they may be now from our own contemporary history, in doing so they illuminate ours.