The Fatal Englishman Read Online Free PDF Page B

paths, he never doubted Picasso’s pre-eminence. What Picasso had done, at the same time as one or two others, such as Delaunay and Kandinsky, was to break finally with the idea that a painting need represent a version of something that exists. By 1912 he had stopped trying to fix an object as the focus of a painting but was using the whole picture space itself: everything in it, whether colour or shape, contributed to the painting, but not as a representation of something in life or nature. The assumption behind this development was that images could appeal more directly to the eye if they were free of the wearisome task of trying to represent something else.
    Wood did not really understand this assumption and was not much interested in it. He put it baldly: ‘The old landscapes and pictures of women that looked exactly like them are no longer sought after by those who know what’s what.’ But he was shrewd enough both to recognise Picasso’s genius and to steal from him what could be useful in his own work: ‘pungency’, according to the artist Winifred Nicholson; or freedom of line and boldness with figures.
    The dinner went well. Picasso talked to Christopher Wood about painting and Wood believed they had become great friends. The function was probably a duty required of Picasso by his patron to please her nephew, but in any case he made himself charming to the young Englishman.
    In July Wood gave his mother an unprecedented glimpse of his mental agitation. He felt lonely and unable to discuss the problems of his painting with anyone because Gandarillas was unwell and he didn’t like to trouble him. ‘My brain is working too hard and I don’t know where the end will come … I have come to a certain stage, I suppose one would call it a revolution in one’s mind … I have worked very hard and produced nothing whatever to satisfy me.’ He told his mother he would give ten years of his life to be alone with her and talk. ‘You are unhappy sometimes, you write and tell me so,’ he went on, beginning to sound more like his mother’s lover than her son. ‘Have you ever loved really? Do you realise the value of it? … I am so looking forward to seeing Daddy again. I do so want to be very happy withhim and I shall do all in my power to be so. Do you think he wants me to come home? I think a great deal about him, although I never write. I admire him extremely as a man in very many ways, but don’t tell him so.’
    Don’t tell him so … Wood’s exile to Paris, and the difference of opinion it revealed between his parents, caused tension at home in Huyton.
    Wood worked on throughout the hot summer, standing stripped to the waist and cooled by an electric fan. In September he and Gandarillas went to London, from where they planned to motor up to Scotland with a friend called Jack Gordon. Although they went past Liverpool they did not stop at Huyton. They played golf at Inverness but gave up after nine holes, because even with his limp, Wood was too good for his companions: it is hard to imagine that a man of Gandarillas’s indoor habits was much of a force on the links. From Glencoe Wood wrote to his mother: ‘I am longing to see you, but I do hate Huyton.’ She had to make of this what she could, knowing that he had driven almost past her door.
    They returned to London, where Wood met Luisa Casati’s daughter Christina, who struck him as being a more attractive version of her mother. He was beginning to be drawn to women, though he still preferred male company because women, he claimed, always kept him waiting and then required too much attention and reassurance. Gandarillas was his true friend and benefactor: they had an excellent arrangement which allowed Wood to do as much painting as he liked and, to a large extent, live the life he chose. Wood could not imagine any marriage providing such latitude. The trouble with Gandarillas was that he was so dedicated to parties: they were not a youthful indulgence,