ARTISTS AND OLD AGE
311
the
poetes maudits.
These psychopathological and sociological studies
of the lives of men of genius, and of their last days, are none of my
making; they .are the work of others. The trend of thought may seem
a little disconcerting nowadays, when the artist has acquired some of
the outer trappings of the solid, respectable citizen and adopts the
airs of a functionary; and indeed he feels that he
is
a functionary,
in a definite position, which forces him to seek government commis–
sions and external security. Routine criticism, the reviewing of exhibi–
tions and books commissioned and paid for by newspapers and pub–
lishers, has dragged the artist into public life, into the general hotch–
potch in which individualism is coming to an end in our epoch. But
let there be no mistake about it: he who is under that compelling
urge remains inwardly untouched. In a helicopter painted arsenic–
green he goes on climbing back into his esoteric studio.
It
is only
a short while since the eighty-three-year-old Degas said: "A picture
is something that needs just as much smartness and viciousness as
crime does-forgery with a dash of Nature thrown in."
Perhaps the image of the arsenic-green helicopter is a trifle banal.
All the same, let us get into that helicopter for .a moment so that we
can look down on what we can't take with us of mankind and the
earth.
It is not an ascent that is made with very much love for hu–
manity. Think for instance of that self-portrait of Tintoretto's, a late
work (I don't remember where it hangs, I only know it from repro–
ductions) -there's a thing one can't forget, and there is only one
word for it: rancid. Or think of Rembrandt's last self-portraits–
reserved, wary, and as though they were saying: Count me out.
None of the great
old
men was an idealist. They got along without
realism. What they could do and what they wanted was the things
that are possible. It is only dilettantes who dream of the impossible.
Art-these men say-art
must
put into the picture the relation–
ship there is between the world and the absolute. Art must restore
the center, but without losing in depth. Art must represent man as
being made in the image of God-and is there anything at all that
is not made in the image of God?-for if there is I haven't heard of
it-and I don't exclude even the tiger. And what it comes to finally
is that there is no "must" where art is concerned. There's a radio in
this
helicopter of ours, and right now it's playing a hit from the film
