Nagy Ildikó szerk.: A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria Évkönyve 1980-1988 (MNG Budapest, 1989)

Perneczky, Géza: PICASSO AFTER PICASSO

cannot be sure what they are talking about. This leads to the death of the second 'great story

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, of the intellectual appreciation of knowledge. In addition to analysing the hopelessness of the situation of the new fragmented encyclopaedia as a result of specialization, Lyotard also points out a brutally common experience which has totally altered the role of knowledge in the world. Since knowledge is not accompanied by a 'great story' which would anchor human knowledge to an uniform cosmos and ethnic with a force similar to myth, it has become a technique of power (and money). Whatever we know is valuable (may be considered true) in so far as it increases power. As information represents the most essential capital in the horizon of the Post-Modern age, knowledge is not more (and not less) than information, which, if one is talented enough, can be used just as well as gold was used in the past. "Even nostalgia for the lost great story has disappeared from among the majority of people"

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, says Lyotard resignedly, then characterizes our relationship to knowledge with a witty twist, pointing out how formal the dispute on the truth and values of things has become. Thus the basic question of the new metadispute is no longer "what is the value of your argument?", but "What is the value of 'the value of your argument' " ... Perhaps this self-reflection on the plane of literature rather than on that of philosophy (in which it is impossible not to sense the Nietzschean school) brings Lyotard's thoughts close to aesthetic sensitivity. As if it were only a variant of the ultimate message of Picasso's series Hie Painter and His Model, which does not ask 'what is the value of your art?', but 'what is the value of the value of your art?': Lyotard's approximate answer is that it is as valuable as it proves to be effective. And it is sufficient only to make models of things for the study of effectiveness. We have an increasingly more precise knowledge of the rules of modelling, and we have a growing understanding of the value of knowledge — not in reality but — in the meta-world of models. The place of the old encyclopaedia was taken by the technique of effectiveness (a kind of game theory). It is possible, concludes Lyotard, that we have no other real knowledge than what is meant by game theory for an unstable system: in this case the result pertains to catastrophe or is unknown.

ft Looking back on the history of the avant-garde, it is easy to reconsider the main characteristics of the modern objectives on the basis of Lyotard's theory. In fact the importance of the two 'great stories' is undeniable in the birth and progress of the avant-garde. The 'heroic epic', based on social emancipation, justified modern efforts by embodying the public weal and a truer art transforming the entire society. This conviction was the chief driving force of the Constructivists or of the avant-garde gathered around Expressionism. Picasso was brought near this line of argument by the growing crisis of the inter-war years and by the Spanish Civil War. The other 'heroic epic', the intellectual value of knowledge, was at least as important a driving force for the avant-garde. Trends such as cubism or the intellectual demand manifest in Kandinsky's and Klee's art (but also its ethical posture in a broader sense) would be unintelligible without the second 'great story', advocating the superiority of 'speculation' and justifying itself by its own achievements. Nor is this much altered if one remembers that many artists, including the cubists, did not happily undertake the role of intellectual quest, they preferred to rely on poetry, on intellectual play. If we move nearer Picasso and the works he accumulated during the decades of the heroic period of the avant-garde, and also to the studio declarations accompanying them, or to the roles Picasso was performing for the wider public (and obviously for his own entertainment), then we cannot see so clearly the child of the Enlightenment. In fact not every work of Picasso had such an unambiguous intent as Guernica had, and not every period of Picasso can be considered as rational as his cubist. On the contrary, the major driving force behind Picasso's work was that almost demoniac power by which he had ripped up the trodden paths and often replaced plausible motivation by visions of disquietingly dark origin. Posthumously we are ready to celebrate the entire oeuvre as a great act of humanism and human cognizance, but the details of every piece, every figure break forth from a well, so deep that we fell giddy when leaning over into it: there is a fear of death of unusual intensity, a superstitious sensitivity, an inclination towards a magic way of thinking, or rituals repeated with the vigour of a maniac (not only in art, in his private life as well). The literature on Picasso is inexhaustible in enumerating such motifs. Picasso, not trusting the power of the word, the explanations and the programmes, can only be called a man of politics on the basis of his fidelity; even this fidelity first acquired a concrete content well beyond his fiftieth birthday. Picasso was not interested in politics until the thirties. This indifference characterized the answers he gave to the professional questions of the avant-garde too. If he did become really excited, he relied on passion and not on arguments. These traits can be associated with romanticism in many respects, but they actually point to earlier periods, to the centuries of pre-Enlightenment Europe. Thus if Picasso is measured by philosophically founded modernism, which links the idea of the modern with the appearance of the individual become autonomous and with distinct individual achievements, then it is difficult to doubt the vigour of the individual in Picasso: but it would be equally difficult to trace the second element of modernity in him, namely the rational myths that have evolved since the age of Enlightenment. One does not see the republican hero or even the faithful worker of the Hegelian Spirit in Picasso, but an extremely contradictory formula, in which autonomy is replaced by an almost anarchic desire for freedom, and intellect in the modern sense is replaced by a razor-sharp intelligence moved by the springs of superstition. The sacrilegious question almost forces itself to be posed, namely can such a Picasso be called a 'modern' artist? Similarly, can the ageing artist be considered 'Post-Modern'? Was not Picasso, who had always been a heathen modern, because he always found joy in caricaturing the various Isms, only an eclectic commentator of modern efforts throughout his life? In other words, a 'Post-Modern' opponent? This issue is not occurring for the first time, it was raised in those decades when the ambivalence of modernity and postmodernity was as yet unknow.

7 The confusion that may occur around Picasso naturally points beyond his personality, as he was not a lone figure of the avant-garde with his 'subjectivist' turns; if he is removed then the entire avant-garde art would collapse. Apparently our logic leads us into a blind alley.