How does a great idea turn into a bad book?
Picasso's War, by Hugh Eakin
October 17th, 2023
Most bad books announce themselves in the opening pages. The writing is dull, the scholarship weak, the plotting basic, the foreshadowing extreme. There is thus a great delight in finding a book whose badness sneaks up on you and who's big badnesses are accompanied by a flotilla of little ones to make for a completely satisfying excursion. Hugh Eakin has managed this trick!
Subtitled ‘How Modern Art Came To America’, his book covers the years from about 1910 to 1940. The object of attention is firmly fixed in the opening pages: how did the magnificent 1939 modern art exhibit—centered on but not exclusively about Picasso—come to be? That it was a majestic and signal event is well understood, likewise it’s antecedent in the great Armory Show of 1913. That America was slower than the Continent to appreciate Cubism and many other newer artistic approaches is a given, and the role of the Museum of Modern Art in leading the way by highlighting wonderfully innovative art to the citizens of New York is an accepted fact. What, then remains to be investigated? Many an author would simply refashion the old story in new prose and add an eccentric digression or two into lesser-known corners. After all, how many of the multitude of books emerging on World War 2 strategy or on Jane Austen are adding anything vitally new to the confirmed record, or are persuasively challenging accepted wisdom?
Eakin’s badness campaign follows 3 main axes. First, he misleads starting with the title. Picasso is largely offstage the entire book, at least in terms of the question of modern art coming to America. He does not campaign or even push. Eakin cannot even try to imply that he does because Picasso’s life is so well documented, not least by John Richardson. The recently issued volume 4 of Richardson’s Picasso biography makes it clear that Picasso was not particularly worried about his American sales or exposure. But what he was worried about in the 1930’s was the Spanish Civil War. A confirmed pacifist, he overcame his lifelong aversion to public political engagement to increasingly endorse the Republican cause through funds, public positions, and of course his art. Guernica is his most vivid and well-known work, but there are numerous others. That story has been told in many other places, not least in Russel Martin’s book titled—ah, anyone could see this coming—Picasso’s War! Not only did Eakin appropriate the title he more or less copied the dustcover layout and color scheme, and all in service of a book that does not in any way justify the title. How very odd!
The second axis is misdirection. The first 190 pages of the books 387 pages are a hugely enjoyable appreciation of a Wall Street lawyer, John Quinn, who was indeed a field marshal of the campaign to bring modern art to America. He set up the Armory Show. He bought promiscuously and then with great focus in order to support artists that otherwise had no patrons. He successfully shepherded legislation through Congress to benefit American based dealers and collectors. He fought censorship. He cultivated European, especially French dealers and connoisseurs, asking what he could do to break the American fixation with the Old Masters and romantic paintings. He mentored collectors and curators and writers. He financed magazines and organized exhibits. On top of it all, he amassed a thrilling collection of paintings that were stacked against the walls of his New York penthouse. But he becomes ill and dies in 1924. Surely then, his friends are going to carry on the battle, and his collection will become the core of the Museum of Modern Art. Actually, not a bit of it! He makes no provisions to maintain the collection and it is immediately sold and dispersed. There was not even an inventory. His friends love him but make no organized effort to carry on his legacy. And there is no disguising how complete this erasure is, because Eakin can barely muster a few pro forma connections to him in the second half of the book. The second half then follows the familiar path of Picasso’s Parisian dealers, of the Barrs and the Museum of Modern Art’s formation, and the gyrations and pressure on the art world attendant on the broader economy and the rise of fascism. The entire architecture of the book is misleading. One gets the feeling that Eakin intended the book to be about Quinn and his circle but came to realize there wasn’t enough there to support the ambition of claiming Quinn’s centrality in bringing modern art to America. But rather than lose the sunk costs of the Quinn research, he does what the Cathedral of St. John the Divine did up near Columbia in NYC. It grafted a medieval Catholic cathedral trunk onto a Byzantine head to create a gloriously mismatched pastiche. But at least in St. John you can still meet God. In Eakin’s work the emaciated Picasso trunk and the Quinn head are simply confusion.
The third axis is whistling past the graveyard. For what exactly remains after the first two: if not Quinn or Picasso, then who or what brought modern art to America? Eakin makes a game try to elevate Alfred Barr Jr and his wife Magda to that piloting role. He is absolutely convincing that the Barrs and their supporters, including wealthy society women, were vital in bringing it to New York. Note, to New York and New York alone. Their traveling exhibits were notable failures outside of New York unless built around the almighties like Van Gogh, Matisse, or Picasso. Eakin has to walk a perilous path. On the one hand he has to indict the rest of America for what used to be called Babbittry—an unsophisticated boosterism of the local and conventional. On the other hand, he has to acknowledge the construction of museums around the country with a nascent or deep interest in modern art at the same time as Barr is struggling to get anything going in New York. Something, somehow, is stimulating that interest, and it for sure has very little to do with the Barrs and MOMA. But it is never explored at all. It is a mysterious background, strong currents going on behind the visible spectrum that Eakin either couldn’t master or hoped would not be noticed as he whistled the Barrs and MOMA anthem. Are there models of how it could have been done, even in a way that would have honored MOMA while spreading the glory? Absolutely. In recent years the cultural historians David Reynolds and Brenda Wineapple have each written 2 or more thrilling books that connect the artist or core question to the broader historical currents: on Whitman and Lincoln [Reynolds] and on Dickinson and the divides that became the Civil War [Wineapple].
It’s time to leave the book. It is worth reading as long as one has very diminished expectations. It is a fun excursion through the early 1900s American art scene, and that is it. As for the author, should we shame a writer who could not live up to his ambitions? Not generally. But Eakin made intentional choices to misdirect and underdeliver. He had the access, the financial support, and, presumably, the background to do a lot better, and he failed badly. That deserves calling out.
An interesting question now surfaces: how common is the type of ‘acceptable’ badness where the ambition overwhelms the product? Hard to say—one would need to read many more books than I have to make a judgment on prevalence. But it is not unknown. Two recent examples come to mind. Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve completely fails to make the case for the impact of the ancient manuscript whose survival over the centuries and whose undoubted greatness he convincingly documents. The reader learns a lot that is new and true and can forgive the hype. Similarly, Mark Mazower’s recent book on the Greek Revolution promised to show that it broke many patterns of state formation and international solidarity and that it jumpstarted new currents of political philosophy. Maybe it did but he fails to demonstrate any of those claims of larger importance for what really seems to have been a limited colonial revolt, however successful it was. At least he delivers a comprehensive and insightful analysis of an important corner of the world as it fractured, and it can be read in conjunction with his other works to get a deeper understanding of the Greco Mediterranean over the centuries and its impact on neighboring empires and civilizations.
Let us offer charity to writers that fall short. They had the courage to try. But let us not deceive ourselves into thinking that parts are a whole, or that bad is good. The writer offers the buffet. We are not obliged to eat it all or to compliment the chef.