PARTISAN REVIEW
How responsible some of the local attacks upon irresponsibility
are, can be seen from an examination of
Mona Lisa's Moustache,
a
recent work so vulgarly contrived that it would be idiotic to give it
attention
if
it had not been hailed by several reviewers as the final
sane word on an "insane subject." Gibbings treats the Duchamp "Mona
Lisa with a Moustache" as a painting. He interprets Gauguin as an exhi–
bitionist who repudiated a business career for a hedonistic exploration of
the dark "occult" forces of the South Seas; his painting, as insane jargon.
The author, an interior decorator, misstates facts; once, indeed, in a
radio broadcast, he claimed that Hitler was not opposed to modern art
but only to a few Russian "bolshevik" specimens. In the course of further–
ing his contention that there is a connection between Nazi degeneracy
and modern art, he imputes the fall of France to Picasso's "Guernica"!
One should take a good look at "Guernica." Picasso was no Vansittart.
The bull that has gone raging mad, tearing down the city, ripping ter–
rified bodies to fragments, does not signify a specified "people." Picasso
indicts a virulent principle, the leader run amuck, gone mad with a
power that has turned
his
victims to stone. The bull may be Franco; it
is the dictator, triumphant, wherever he may be found, under any
name. That this painting, with its tremendous significance for our
time, should be misinterpreted as a symbol for a people's degeneracy is
a symptom of someone's malaise. It was a sign of health that Gertrude
Stein could say, "I write for myself and strangers."
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