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Updated: June 20, 2025
The great modern painters Derain, Matisse, Picasso, Bonnard, Friesz, Braque, etc. were firmly settled on their own lines of development before ever Jazz was heard of: only the riff-raff has been affected. Italian Futurism is the nearest approach to a pictorial expression of the Jazz spirit. The movement bounced into the world somewhere about the year 1911.
Picasso, on the other hand, who never tried to be anything of the sort, is the paramount influence in modern painting subject, of course, to the supreme influence of Cézanne. All the world over are students and young painters to whom his mere name is thrilling; to whom Picasso is the liberator. His influence is ubiquitous: even in England it is immense.
Also of this: it takes a more intense effort of the creative imagination to leave out what Tchehov leaves out of his short stories than to say what Meredith put into his long ones. In the Plutarchian method there was ever a snare, and I have come near treading in it. The difference between Matisse and Picasso is not to be stated in those sharp antitheses that every journalist loves.
He has drawn right away from "the field" to join those leaders Matisse, Picasso, Derain, Bonnard, shall we say, with one or two more in close attendance a cursory glance at whom, as they flash by, provokes this not unprofitable exclamation: "How different they are!" Apparently, amongst the chiefs, that famous movement no longer counts for much.
George and Mark argued about Giacometti. George maintained that Giacometti was better than Picasso. Mark would have none of it. "All that angst! He never met a color he didn't like cuz the color was always black. My God! I mean, for an Italian!" "He was Swiss," Jennifer said. "That explains it," Mark said. "I love you," George said. "I took Modern Art at Bowdoin," Jennifer said.
"I think it is Picasso that interests me now," Sitgreaves was saying. "He puts wood and pieces of paper into his composition; architecture, that's what it is.... I don't go to Blanche's any more.
I feel sure that those who would place him amongst the masters of the movement Matisse, Picasso, Derain, Bonnard, and Friesz mistake; for, with all his charm and originality, he was too thoughtless and superficial to achieve greatly. He invented something which he went on repeating; and he could always fascinate simply by his way of handling a brush or a pencil.
He is a mystic; which, of course, does not prevent him being a remarkably gay and competent man of the world. Amateurs who knew him in old days are sometimes surprised to find Picasso now in a comfortable flat or staying at the Savoy.
And though Duncan Grant holds his own handsomely with Marchand, Vlaminck, Lhote, de Segonzac, Bracque and Modigliani, I am not yet prepared to class him with Matisse, Picasso, Derain, and Bonnard. Having bravely recognized this disagreeable truth, let us take as much interest in contemporary British painting as we can.
Some time ago, however, before Picasso was found out, a young Russian æsthete so Mr. Fry tells us was licensed by the competent authority to pronounce that artist's eulogy, on the understanding, of course, that the lecture should somehow serve as a stick wherewith to beat the opposition. Nothing easier: Picasso was pitted against Renoir.
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