The Shame Of It

Press, Volume C, Issue 29436, 11 February 1961, Page 3

The Shame Of It

[A Fourth Leader in “The Times"} From urbacity (a word, all too rarely used, which means “excess of civic pride”) London cannot be said to suffer. It is provincial cities and seaside resorts which resent criticism, flaunt their charms, foster local patriotism, and go ; in for municipal heraldry. The! Great Wen stews, grumbling, mildly, in its own juice, in-1 different to praise, impervi-, ous to blame. The slightly morbid amour-propre which it discovered under bombardment 20 years ago wore off as soon as the lights went on again.

The revelation made by the trustees of the Tate that their esteemed Gallery houses only nine Picassos, whereas 15 are, to be found in Zurich (population, as they pointedly remind us, only 390,000), was clearly intended to be shaming, to make the Londoners sit up, to engender protest meetings and popular demonstrations. It seems unlikely to achieve this result. If Crabbing-on-Sea were suddenly made aware that it possessed only half as many television aerials as Lugworm Regis, there might indeed be some sort of a furore; but any hopes entertained in cultural circles that; London s poor showing as a ‘ Picasso depository may cause resentful mobs to roam the! streets are virtually certain to’ prove vain. Londoners already have to put up with so many imperfections, deficiencies, and near-scandals in their warren that this latest addition to them is scarcely calculated to prove the last straw; it is no good trying to goad an elephant with a paint-brush. There is, moreover, something arbitrary about this method of working out a sort of artistic means test. To assume that there should exist some relation between the J size of a city and the number! of art-treasures or other; amenities which it contains is; surely unsound, if not plain silly. The Trustees of the Tate Gallery seem to be convinced that London has too few Picassos and to imply, as a corollary, that Zurich has too many. But what about Berne and Bogota, Birmingham and Benares? How many Picassos have they? How many ought they to have? And are there enough to go round? Once you accept the idea of a ration-scale you run into endless difficulties. These will increase with time, as the wheel of fashion turns. There is pre-; cious little in the history of art (as the Trus*ees of the Tate Gallery must know very well) to allay the suspicion that a day may come when Picasso's works will lose their leading position in the hit parade. The ebb and flow of nouvelles vagues in taste may land some later, perhaps even some earlier, artist above the| present high watermark of critical acclaim. Who can say that. 20 or 30 years hence, the world will not have discovered virtues, as undiscernible now as Picasso’s were once, in canvases at present neglected or derided? Purely as a matter of interest, do the Trustees of the Tate Gallery know how' many Landseers there are in! Zurich?