Art and Truth


We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given to us to understand.

Pablo Picasso


Researching for my FAF entry, I stopped by Artcyclopedia for some details and noticed that topping the list of favorite searches is Mr. Picasso. Not one of my favorites at all, in fact I eschew him, today I highlight the phrase at the top of his Artcyclopedia page and entreat you to read a longer quote at the end of my entry.

While I might warm up to some of Picasso's art by visiting the museum in Madison, GA to see a signed print, I cannot seem to erase from my mind Picasso's political persuasions. I guess I should be glad I dont know too much about the backgrounds of other artists or I would like none.

As many of you know I'm reading (slowly) Ideas Have Consequences by Richard Weaver. It is very thought-provoking. It was published in 1948. The following Picasso quote dates from 1952. The two have a connection.

From the moment that art ceases to be food that feeds the best minds, the artist can use his talents to perform all the tricks of the intellectual charlatan. Most people can today no longer expect to receive consolation and exaltation from art. The refined, the rich, the professional 'do-nothings,' the distillers of quintessence desire only the peculiar, the sensational, the eccentric, the scandalous in today's art.

I myself since the advent of Cubism, have fed these fellows what they wanted and satisfied these critics with all the ridiculous ideas that have passed through my mind. The less they understood them, the more they admired me. Through amusing myself with all these absurd farces, I became celebrated, and very rapidly. For a painter, celebrity means sales and consequent affluence. Today, as you know, I am celebrated, I am rich. But when I am alone, I do not have the effrontery to consider myself an artist at all, not in the grand old meaning of the world: Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt, Goya were great painters.

I am only a public clown - a mountebank.


I have understood my time and have exploited the imbecility, the vanity, the greed of my contemporaries.

It is a bitter confession,

this confession of mine,

more painful than it may seem.
But at least and at last it does have the merit of being honest.

For sources-nazis like myself, this quote is clipped from the publisher's letter page of Plein Air magazine, Oct 2005 issue. The comments were titled "Weapon of Indifference."