Picasso, Solzhenitsyn and the Gulag

(Picture: Gert Verhoeff)

(15.12.2022) Pablo Picasso died in 1973 (8. April), the year also The Gulag Archipelago by writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was published (in Russian language, at the end of the year, at Paris). The question that we will have to discuss here, is the question of how much did Pablo Picasso ever know about the Gulag. Because some things he did know. And even some more informations Pierre Daix had (who was close to Picasso). This is about clarifying things that, up to the present day, have never been clarified. And the timespan we have to consider here, is the timespan of the years 1953 (when Daix, who had been a denier of the Gulag before, got to know that the Gulag indeed did exist) up to the year of 1972 (the year of the last meeting Daix had with Picasso).

Selected Literature:
Pierre Daix, J’ai cru au matin, Paris 1976;
Pierre Daix, Tout mon temps. Révisions de ma mémoire, Paris 2001;
Pierre Daix, Dénis de mémoire, Paris 2008
Pierre Daix, Avec Elsa Triolet. 1945-1971, Paris 2010;
Arthur Miller, Inge Morath, In Russland, Luzern/Frankfurt a.M. 1969

(Picture: Argentina)

One) Collage Versus Picture

In 1968 Pablo and Jacqueline Picasso did read – passionately, as Pierre Daix says (Matin, p. 408) – the memoirs of Artur London. It was as if there had been a collage, Picasso told Daix, by which he meant that all the ingredients of a painting were there, but still lying on the table, on the floor or were hidden underneath some papers, – and but now, ›thanks to the Czechs‹, Picasso said, there was now a finished picture. The collage had turned into being a picture.
But this was concerning de-Stalinization, not the Gulag. Artur London, a man of the communist establishment, had been the victim of a show trial, but now had been able to rehabilitate himself. But the Gulag was another matter, and we may apply the logic used by Picasso to that matter. We may ask – in terms of collage versus picture – what did Picasso actually know? Some things he did know, but the collage, as one may say, he could not, did not, and perhaps also: he did not want to turn into a picture. But how is that?

Pierre Daix had known about the Gulag since 1953, since the year Elsa Triolet had actually informed him that David Rousset had been right: the Gulag did exist (and Daix had, accusing Rousset, denied its existence).
Since we have also been discussing the friendship of Picasso with writer Ilya Ehrenburg, we have to repeat here that Ilya Ehrenburg had a secretary who had been in the Gulag, but had been allowed to come home, becoming the secretary of writer Ilya Ehrenburg, friend of Picasso (who was awarded, in the 1960s, a Soviet peace prize, the Lenin prize, by Ehrenburg, a prize which Picasso accepted). A photo of Natasha Stoliarova, secretary of Ilya Ehrenburg (a photo with Ehrenburg, his wife, and Arthur Miller, can be found in Miller/Morath, p. 172). Stoliarova, as Simone Signoret got to know, seems to have seen de-Stalinization, despite of being a homecomer from the Gulag, critically.
To the honour of Pierre Daix, it has to be said that Daix, all of his life, worked on coming to terms with his past. And due to many, many publications, we can have a picture of this process of remembering and trying to come to terms with one’s own past. But also the picture Daix transmits seems to resemble a collage rather than a finished picture. And it is about identifying the decisive moments and turning points that Daix, indeed does transmit, but again and again in new ways, with new details coming up, details that, in earlier memoirs, might have been missing. We have to review that process of which Daix has given an honourable example; and our starting point may be that, Picasso as well as Daix, knew about the Gulag due to Solzhenitsyn having published, in 1962, his short novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and that Daix had provided a preface to the French edition of that short novel.

Two) Seeing It Coming, But Not Owning the Secret

Daix had known of the Gulag since 1953, and at the time of de-Stalinization, at the time of the ›Thaw‹-era, there was the hope that, yes, the Gulag might have existed, but that Khrushchev was now dismantling the whole system, that it was finished with the Gulag, and that one had to speak about it, yes, but not all of the time, and not to the risk of slandering the Soviet Union or even the project of communism.
The process of Pierre Daix of coming to terms with his own past as a denier of the Gulag (and despite the fact that he had himself survived the concentration camp of Mauthausen) was a gradual one. And during the 1960s, and despite of Daix having provided a preface to Solzhenitsyn’s short novel (Daix had been informed early as to Solzhenitsyn, thanks again to Elsa Triolet), David Rousset declined a handshake with Daix twice in the 1960s (although, much later, such handshake did occur).
If we turn now to Picasso again, it has to be said that the painter was indeed curious, and was observing the dynamics of de-Stalinization. But as to the Gulag, it has to be said, that Daix, in the years 1953-1962, may not have spoken with Picasso about the matter, and also Picasso, despite of being curious, was not the active part in this – collective – process of coming to terms with one’s own past (as supporters of Stalin, or of a system led by Stalin, or of a project, discredited by Stalin). Since Daix, at one point, declares, that he had known a secret, but not owned it. Which I do interpret as saying that he, Pierre Daix, had not been morally entitled to reveal something to others, something that he knew primarily thanks to Elsa Triolet. In 1962 it was clear that the Gulag had existed, while its actual dimensions were far from being known, and the hope that this was a matter of the past, was still strong. Which means also that one was postponing the speaking of the past, because, one day, with de-Stalinization proceeding, it was clear that had to address the subject of the Gulag, because it had been an essential part of Soviet history, and of the Stalinist era very in particular.

(Picture: kunstfreunde.koeln; film by Lene Berg)

Three) Observing de-Stalinization

Pierre Daix has, on various occasions, spoken of the last visit he paid to Picasso. And we know, due to these scattered fragments, that Picasso had spoken about the Party, the French Communist Party, of which he had been a member and still was a member, on this occasion. And he had spoken about the Party as never before, desperate, enraged.
But it seems that Picasso spoke of the problem of communism, and – implicitly – of the burden of having been a supporter of communism, still in terms of de-Stalinization. Which means, in terms of being frustrated that during the Stalin era many crimes had been committed, but Picasso, when speaking about these crimes, never in his life, did address the systematic crimes of the Stalinist system, but only did address the fact that individuals had been tortured and killed. And it seems that Picasso never got to know the full truth, the truth in its horrifying dimensions, as he died in 1973, before the publication of The Gulag Archipelago.
Pierre Daix got to know it, and continued with trying to come to terms with his past: by writing on Solzhenitsyn, on the problem of communism, by publishing his memoirs twice (in 1976, in 2001), by again and again reviewing what had happened in his life; but one has also to say that Daix tended to spare Picasso such questions. And the problem remains, that Daix was not only a witness and Picasso-biographer, but that Daix had also been the one who had decided how much to tell Picasso. Of what he, Daix, knew, but not necessarily was allowed to share, or thought it better not to share with anyone. At least not with Picasso. And thus Daix had not only represented the very honorable attempt to work on his memories, to mourn having been led into error, but had influenced very strongly to what degree Picasso had been able to come to terms with his. As a member of the Party. And if one does ask: why had Daix not critizized Picasso for not wanting to know more about the Gulag. The answer must be: because Daix, who was close to Picasso, did probably not tell Picasso more than he, Daix, thought Picasso ought to know. And Picasso, as the one personality standing above the misery of prosaic politics (although Picasso was involved in that misery, and had wanted to be involved), Daix needed as a guiding figure that he, to some degree, did idealize. And the question if Picasso indeed had been standing above these matters, has to be anwered in the negative. He was not. Curious he was, but not very critical as to himself, not very curious probably, as to urging Daix to tell him everything, and also a bit lachrymosely, since he, Picasso seems to have reflected politics not only, but to a large degree in terms of his own standing as an artist, and in terms mainly of his own manifestations as a artist (such as his notorious portrait of Stalin), and not as a critical observer, looking about his own shoulders, and looking at the systemic culture of violence in the Soviet Union and the nature of the system of Stalinism.

At the end of Picasso’s life, Pierre Daix and the 91-year old Picasso seem to have agreed, in October 1972, according to Daix, that everything one knew about Stalin now, had already been ›in‹ Picasso’s 1953 portrait of Stalin. Which, of course, on art historical level and taken literally, is nonsensical. But if Daix transmitted, on some level, and by means of tragic irony, that, actually, yes, one had agreed that, with both men tacitly knowing that this was nonsensical, because one had been ›idiots‹ then ›who had believed everything‹, it was also human not to delve into the matter further, in conversation with a dying man. It is perhaps noteworthy that Daix chose to transmit the episode, if well ›hidden‹ in his Picasso dictionary (p. 740 and p. 832), because by transmitting this episode he was to leave if to postery, to assess or to guess the actual meaning of this last conversation on the matter with painter Pablo Picasso, who was to die in April of 1973.

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