On Not Taking Tea with Picasso

#41

   In 1949, the surrealist painter Roland Penrose settled at Farley Farm House (near Chiddingly in East Sussex) with American photographer, Vogue War Correspondent and style-icon Lee Miller. If you visit there today you may find somewhere on display a monochrome snap showing Pablo Picasso looking bemused and slightly out of place in the nearby countryside. He is standing on one of those grassy triangles that sometimes occur at the junctions of English country lanes. Behind him, an old-fashioned road sign offers improbable directions – pointing to paths which may meander from here at Muddles Green, between the fields and hedgerows, eventually to Much Sodding and possibly Little Piddledown.

   That was in 1950 and Picasso was visiting England for what turned out to be the last time. He spent a weekend with the Penrose family at the farm and naturally they thought to telephone their neighbours, Vanessa Bell[1] and Duncan Grant, living nearby at Firle. Imagine the ensuing conversation:

Interior. Day.

A telephone rings in the hallway of Charleston, a modest country house with gaily decorated walls and furnishings. Vanessa Bell hurries along the passage, wiping paint or ink or mud from her hands. She pauses to tidy her reflection in the glass of a picture-frame then cautiously lifts the receiver. “Lewes 101,” she announces very deliberately.

“’Nessa, hun, it’s Lee…Lee Miller.”

“Miss Miller..."
"Call me 'Lee', honey."
"...Miss Lee, how utterly perfect to hear from you…”

“Rolly suggested I call; we have our great friend Pablo staying and naturally we thought…”

“Pablo? Pablo? Who might that be?”

“Picasso, honey. Pablo PICASSO.”

“Oh, that Pablo. Why, that’s simply too divine!”

“Well, I guess he is rather fascinating.”

“Duncan...er, Mr Grant, absolutely drools…”

“So we wondered whether you and Duncan might care to bicycle over and take tea with us tomorrow afternoon, say 3.30 for 4pm?”

“Oh that would be so lovely..."
[Vanessa pauses, frowns and pulls a face at her reflection in the glass.] "...But I’m afraid not.”

“There will be cakes…”

“Regrettably, we’re all a little tied-up at this end…”

“Oh, do you mean you have a prior engagement?”

“Oh no…Or, rather, actually, in a way, yes.”

“You have me beat, Vanessa.”

“Lee, darling, if one were to say it had to do with ‘family life’, could you paint your own picture?”

“I guess not; or not without chucking at least three fingers of scotch down my throat. Shucks, Vanessa, I confess I thought you were all one big, happy…”

“We are. Truly we are…”

“But just not quite always?”

“Sometimes we do seem a little too ‘all-embracing’ even for my tastes.”

“You guys just crack me up.”

“Some other time perhaps?”

“S’long, honey-lamb. Now you just hang on in there lady.”

“Will do, sweetie. Always have, always will; byeee.”

   That really happened. Not that exact conversation but Vanessa and Duncan were invited to take tea with Picasso and the invitation was declined. “Some other time, perhaps?” When did Vanessa imagine Picasso might next be passing through Muddles Green, or indeed anywhere within a bike-ride of Charleston? It does beg the question of just what might Vanessa and Duncan have been doing that sunny afternoon that was ultimately more attractive, more compelling…more anything, than taking tea with Picasso? Pricking-out the petunias or larding the cat’s boils perhaps[2]? Suggestions on a postcard…

   Picasso had come to England in 1950 at the invitation of Professor John Bernal and the British Peace Committee. Fearing a Communist propaganda stunt, MI5 did its best to frustrate their efforts to hold a World Peace Congress in Sheffield and this left Picasso and other delegates stranded in London. To compensate, Bernal held a party for them at his flat in Torrington Square and Picasso drew a celebratory mural directly onto the plastered wall of his sitting room. The work became known as ‘Bernal’s Picasso’. It is the only mural Picasso produced in England and depicts the heads of a man and a woman decorated with laurel wreaths. Years later, when the flat was faced with demolition, the mural[3] was bodily removed and is now on display in Picasso & Modern British Art at Tate Britain[4].

   Last week, the Bus Lane wended over to Pimlico[5] to enjoy this exhibition. The drawing skills alone are enough to stop anyone in their tracks. Apart from Picasso’s own work, there are line-drawings by Henry Moore that take your breath away, masterly drawings, paintings and photography by David Hockney and a strange, intriguing piece of great intensity by Wyndham Lewis titled ‘Archimedes Reconnoitring The Enemy Fleet’ (1922). The show examines the influence of Picasso on British art from 1910 until forever. Does this need saying? It should be hard to find any modern artist anywhere whose work was oblivious to Picasso’s achievements.

   Not being an artist myself, I feel able to confess to not liking quite a few of Picasso’s works. One of the star exhibits in this show is The Three Dancers (1925). Frankly, I have to struggle to keep in mind the particular merits the experts attribute to this piece. Picasso considered it one of his two greatest, alongside Les Demoiselles d’Avignon – which - yes - I also find difficult although I’ve been told time and again how significant it is to the Modernist project as a whole.  I did, however, recognise and immediately feel at home with La casserole émaillée[6], painted in Paris in February, 1945. A print of it had hung on my classroom wall in 1960 or ’61. It is an austere Still Life, featuring an empty jug, a forlorn, blue, saucepan and a guttering candle trailing a black triangle of shadow. It seems a deliberately awkward composition. The three objects are estranged from each other and struggle to manifest any harmony or mutuality. It is a reflection on the dislocation of life in a great city suffering a period of dire straits. Paris at the time was undergoing severe rationing following years of oppression. The war was still on and the political future of France was uncertain. It remained an anxious city whose very survival during the German retreat a few months earlier had been in doubt even after the first liberators had arrived.

   And then we came to Bernal’s mural. They do say that at the end of a meal in a restaurant, Picasso might execute a quick drawing on the table-cloth by way of payment. In his latter years, even the slightest doodle attributable to the master might turn out to be worth more than the restaurant itself. Here, the lines are drawn onto the plaster wall with supreme confidence. There is nothing sketchy or hesitant about the marks. They are preserved as fresh, direct and spontaneous as they were in November, 1950.

   So, I begin to wonder, maybe that’s what had worried Vanessa Bell? What if they had gone to tea at Farley Farm? And what if Picasso had got on so famously with Duncan that he then accepted a ride on his crossbar back to Charleston? I mean old Pablo was, well, rather conspicuously ‘foreign’ and reputed to have a formidable sexual appetite… Could either Vanessa or Duncan – or any of the Bloomsbury survivors – have resisted his Cubist charms? And – now here’s the most likely explanation for Vanessa's reluctance – what if the portly Spaniard were to have pleasured all and sundry at her precious Charleston and had then diverted himself away from the ensuing post-coital tristesse by drawing on the walls?

Oh, I say, how perfectly frightful. Now that really would be the bally limit.

---

[1] Sister to Virginia Woolf and doyenne of the Bloomsbury group.

[2] With acknowledgement to the Pythons.

[3] The whole section of wall, complete with laths, horsehair & plaster, measures 2500 x 1500mm and weighs about half a tonne.

[4] Exhibition continues until 15 July 2012.

[5] Useful buses: 159, 185, 360, 88 etc.

[6] The Enamelled Saucepan. February 1945.