PICASSO AND MODERN BRITISH ART at the TATE MODERN
PICASSO AND MODERN BRITISH ART at the TATE MODERN This exhibition is the story of how modern British art became embalmed at a certain point in its evolution, constrained obviously by the assumptions, precepts and conventions of the British class system. Which is not to say that Picasso had a class system to contend with but ultimately choose to side with 'beastly Communists'. Eventually he appeared in Britain in two guises. The first time in 1919 with Diaghilev's Ballet Russe as a set designer, hardly an artist in his own right but a member of an extended group who represented one trend of the European avante garde. In the second incarnation he was the political Picasso, invited to a peace conference in Sheffield organized by the Communist Party then banned by the British government. Picasso came and went on his way, probably thinking rightly that the British government consisted of pathetic, ignorant philistines and hysterical anti-Communist phobics. Perhaps he in