Art: Pablo & the Masses

• Share

Under the firm hand of Communist Leader Laurent Casanova, some 70 French sculptors, painters and art critics got together in Paris last week for what was loudly proclaimed as "an exchange of views." Net result: everyone signed a letter listing the things all good artists should be for & against. What they were against: 1) the Korean war, 2) U.S.-made A-bombs, 3) the "horrors of bacteriological warfare." What they were for: "An art which will draw inspiration from socialist realism and be understood by the working class." Among the signers was one French artist who has tried just about everything except the flat, travel-posterish style of "socialist realism" and who has never seemed to worry much whether the working class understood him or not. His name: Pablo Picasso.