Picasso: Art As Autobiography by Mary Gedo (review)

Books 253 spaced years apart. And becauseonesuspectsthe pages arejumbled, one cannot really study the development of Braque’s thought over this long rich period of 38 years, nor appreciate its context and counterpoint. Each idea, in his spare search for artistic absolutes, stands firmly on its own. But for the scholar,thegrowrhof the man, his intentions and his art are not clearly raceable here. Did Braque’s views remain essentially unchanged throuhout his life-as this sequence suggests-and if so, how is one to understand the growth of his art? But we can be reasonably sure that the Notebook of 1947-55 does represent the later pages of a second notebook, written around the ages of 65 and 71. His preoccupation in these six years shifts from (not) defining art, to even greater universals. Whatever its flaws, no artist, student, or scholar interested in Braque, should be without this paperback. Picasso: Art As Autobiography. Mary Gedo. Univ. Chicago Press, London, 1980. 304 pp.. illus. €12.00. ISBN: 02226-28482-4. Reviewed by Constance Costigan; This book is an interesting addition to the already enormous literature on Pablo Picasso. It claims to be thefirst study to apply the tools of both depth psychology and art history to the entire life work of a visualartist. Gedo’s central concern is to illustrate Picasso’s characterization of his own life’s work as a private diary. He said: ‘Why do you think I date everything I do? Because it’s not sufficient to know an artist’s work-it is necessary to know when he did them, why, how, under what circumstances ...Someday there will undoubtedly be a science-it may be called the science of man. I often think about such a scienceand I want to leave to posterity a documentation that will be as complete as possible. That’s why I put a date on everything I do’ [p. 31. Gedo does not take this remark to be one of Picasso’s self-serving myth-making devices. She takes it at face value, and she iscareful not to generalize the autobiographical approach for understanding the work of other artists like Matisse, who ‘...consciouslycensored, altered, and shaped his art so that it would reveal only beauty, communicate only joy’ [p. 2541. ‘Assistant Professor, Art Department, George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052, U.S.A. Gedo’s exhaustive researches into Picasso’s entire output inpainting, drawing, sculpture, and to a limited extent, printmaking, show how the artist’s earlychildhood experiencesaffectedhiswork. Theearthquake in Malaga and the birth of Picasso’s sister Lola in its midst when he was three years old, for example, surface again and again in the work, notably in ‘Guernica’. The disruption and alteration of important personal relationships throughout Picasso’s life are consistently reflected in changes in production, genre, imagery, and quality of work. Of special interest is Picasso’s relationships with men. In contrast to his well known tragic relationships with women, Picasso’s most important male relationships with his father, Apollinaire, and Braque, provided emotional bridges toward new areas of creativity. Gedo demonstrates that without the extraordinary emotional and artistic support of Braque during the development of Cubism Picassowould neverhavebeen able to portray a fragmented image, since one of his primary fears was that of personal fragmentation. With Braque away, Picasso turned again to more realistic painting. Sabartes, Cocteau, Jacob, Gonzales and Eluard are characterized by Gedo as other constructive ‘genies’who helped effect changes in style and subject matter, and buttressed Picasso against the devastating traumas of his love affairs. Gedo connects the latter years of Picasso’s decline to Jacqueline Roque’s domineering and restrictive influence, one which resulted in Picasso’s relative isolation. With no one to replace his father, Apollinaire, Braque and Matisse as artistic partners, Picasso turned for inspiration to the great masters of the past. Theworks of the last decades find Picasso, the once great innovator, looking back and visually dialoguing with the paintings of Delacroix, Velazquez, Rembrandt, Manet and Matisse. This book is well researched and well written, if sometimes repetitious. It is well documented, and contains a representative set of reproductions, only eight in color, however.The work does...