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The threat of modern art

2022-09-29T10:38:12.314Z


A book explores the creation of a modern art market in the United States and how, in the shadow of World War II, an exhibition dedicated to Picasso at MoMA would help shift the global focus of art from Paris to New York


Late on a spring day in 1924, in John Quinn's New York apartment, a small gathering of art enthusiasts eagerly waited for their host to show them a large canvas facing the wall.

It was the last and highly prized acquisition of this visionary patron who, while earning a living as a Wall Street lawyer, carried out an epic mission: to introduce modern art to the United States, at a time when the number of art was counted on the fingers. collectors interested in it, generally considered a negligent value, executed through aberrant and also threatening techniques.

By turning the painting, the guests were able to admire the magical nocturnal encounter between a huge lion and a sleepy gypsy.

It was

The Sleeping Gypsy

(1897), a work by Henri Rousseau who, being then largely unknown to the general public, had become a kind of hero for some avant-garde artists.

Among them Picasso, who had fervently convinced the collector to acquire the extraordinary work for a modest sum.

There were only a few months left for the lawyer's premature death, and too many years for the United States to admit the clairvoyance of the patron.

The silent triumph of

The Sleeping Gypsy

of that afternoon was just one more step in a tireless struggle, a struggle that had already overcome a world war and would require another so that the art, which Quinn himself ardently pursued, would find a place in the true center of American culture.

It is precisely this fierce battle that Hugh Eakin addresses in his first book,

Picasso's War: How Modern Art Came to America.

.

An eloquent and rigorous story that manages to maintain the interest and curiosity of the reader about its outcome like the plot of a good suspense novel, built through the portraits and skills of brilliant personalities where the painter from Malaga occupies only a discreet place.

A scenario dotted with ambition, rivalry and the tragic consequences of the war centered around two fascinating figures, Quinn and Alfred H. Barr, founding director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), who, within an environment Hostile to its pretensions and relying chiefly on their own ability, discernment, and taste, they were ahead of their time.

Two single verses that never sought applause for themselves but for the cause that they would relentlessly pursue.

Thus, in

Picasso's War

it is not within the dusty and messy artists' studios where the future of art is cooked, but in elegant offices.

Through the ins and outs and juggling, between collectors, curators and artists among whom we find figures such as the dealer and writer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler and others less known such as the Leonce brothers and Paul Rosenberg.

It will be the effort of a small group that manages to transfer the impact of art to the public against a strong prevailing tide, and establish its value in the market so that it will finally be revered by history.

Of Irish origin, Quinn was always something of an

outsider .

in New York, his impulse took him to unexplored places, to living art that pulsed with the moment, not the past.

He served as a common thread between artists, writers, critics and statesmen, he was a promoter of writers such as William Butler Yeats, Joseph Conrad, Ezra Pound and TS Eliot.

He got Congress to repeal a 1909 tax law that imposed a duty on imported works less than fifty years old and exempted historical art.

And although today the 1913 Armory Show (the first major exhibition of modern art that took place in the United States) is considered a key date in the history of art, the lawyer always defended that the revocation would have been a victory much more definitive.

Nobody gave him the importance he deserved.

At his death,

his daring and valuable collection was scattered and the trace of his figure faded into oblivion.

Inquiring into his personal archive, Eakin verified how, in 1914, the collector already had a very clear concept of the type of museum in which to display the art of his time, of what would later become MoMA.

A model that would coincide with what Barr would pursue 15 years later.

Both would also agree on the need to anchor the collection around the great works of Picasso, due to the relevance of Spanish within the new art of the 20th century.

A model that would coincide with what Barr would pursue 15 years later.

Both would also agree on the need to anchor the collection around the great works of Picasso, due to the relevance of Spanish within the new art of the 20th century.

A model that would coincide with what Barr would pursue 15 years later.

Both would also agree on the need to anchor the collection around the great works of Picasso, due to the relevance of Spanish within the new art of the 20th century.

The initial failure of a symbol

Picasso's War

also points to the overvaluation of Picasso's commitment to politics, at least with regard to the time that elapses before he prepares to give shape to

Guernica

.

Kanhweiler described him as the least political of the artists he knew.

In 1936, having been symbolically appointed director of the Prado Museum, the painter was immersed in a bitter and prolonged legal battle with his wife, the dancer Olga Khokhlova, and was balancing his life in France between two lovers, Marie-Thérèse Walter and Dora Maar.

He had then not painted for a year, in order to prevent his art from being claimed by the dancer's lawyers.

While his friends were involved in the fight, the painter seemed totally unconcerned.

"In Spain they kill each other and he wallows in brothels," wrote Margaret Scolari Barr, after meeting the artist in Paris.

In January 1937, the artist began to paint

Franco's Dream and Lie

, a set of satirical vignettes that he never completed, only to later launch himself frantically and in just 35 days to create

Guernica.

However, what is now considered one of the most significant murals in the history of art went practically unnoticed when it was exhibited for the first time in the Spanish pavilion of the international exhibition in Paris.

"It is not too strong to say that his exhibition was a failure," says Eakin during a telephone conversation.

“He was ignored by both the French press and critics.

Not even his friend Louis Aragon mentioned it in his

L'Humanité

column ”.

It took a long time for

Guernica

to become recognized as an indisputable political symbol, a universal statement about the suffering of the civilian population in the face of political violence.

“For decades, Picasso scholars have assumed that Christian Zervos, the artist's faithful friend, had single-handedly salvaged

Guernica

's reputation by publishing a special “summer” issue of

Cahiers d'Art

, his influential art magazine, dedicated to the work,” continues Eakin.

“However, I was able to document that the magazine was not published until October and was probably very unsuccessful.

The painting was later exhibited in England and Scandinavia but there is also no evidence that it will reach a wide section of the public.

It wasn't really until MoMA's major solo exhibition dedicated to the artist,

Picasso: Forty Years of His Art

, in 1939, when it really reached a mass audience,” says Eakin.

"This is the least known part of the painting's history and perhaps it would not have the fame it enjoys today had it not been for this exhibition," warns the writer.

An exhibition organized by Barr, in the shadow of a war, which ended a long struggle of more than a quarter of a century to make Picasso's art known to Americans.

A battle that not only helped define the museum, but also saved hundreds of works from falling into the hands of the Nazis and shifted the focus of world art from Paris to New York.

In 1943, while Picasso's success was still resonating, Barr was dismissed as director of MoMA.

After 14 years of herculean tasks he was informed that he was not producing enough writing.

Throughout the entire narrative it is evident how modern art has been for some not only incomprehensible but also a symptom of deviation and social decline.

In 1933, the psychologist Carl Gustav Jung would write an article in the

Neue Zürcher Zeitung

in which Picasso was diagnosed with schizophrenia through his work.

However, the rejection, which was not limited only to Spanish, would reach its zenith with the arrival of the Nazis to power, who adopted the expression of "degenerate art", and although attenuated, sometimes it seems to resurface over the years. .

In 1970, the Art Workers Coalition protest movement asked MoMA to withdraw

Guernica

How can a museum have a work on other tragedies when it is not acknowledging what the United States is doing in Vietnam? they argued.

In the midst of the debate, the forceful response of the historian Meyer Schapiro was not long in coming: “When it comes to hanging

Guernica

, the Museum [of Modern Art] no longer protests against the crime of Guernica than the Metropolitan Museum protests against the crucifixion of Christ. by hanging a picture on that subject.

Is it Franco's desire to hang

Guernica

in the Prado a protest against the bombing?

To ask Picasso to remove his painting from the Museum because of the Mylai massacre is to accuse the Museum of moral complicity in the crimes of the [US] military.

This I can't do.

Although I share your feelings about all the government action in Vietnam, I will not sign your letter to Picasso....”-

"The historian defended the museum as a universal space, beyond political contests," observes Eakin.

Today, when once again a sector of society seems not to accept certain works by Picasso, Schapiro's voice resonates to remind us that modern art is not made to coincide with the ethical standards of an era that prevent it from delving into the darkest face of humanity and in the forbidden underworlds.

Picasso's War: How Modern Art Came to America

.

Hugh Eakins.

Crown Publishing.

480 pages.

27 euros

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-09-29

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