It’s hardly contentious to state that Pablo Picasso was probably the greatest artist of the twentieth century: his life and career have been explored in forensic detail ever since his death in 1973. However, Tate Liverpool’s ‘Picasso: Peace and Freedom’ show is currently offering art lovers a great opportunity to investigate one of the less celebrated aspects of Brand Picasso: namely, his thirty-plus years as a card-carrying member of the French Communist Party. Typically, Picasso is characterised as something of a playboy, an incorrigible individualist, but this exhibition argues that this reading ignores his commitment to a number of progressive causes, not least his work on behalf of the many World Peace Congresses that occurred in Europe throughout the nineteen-fifties.
It was his dove of peace symbol that became the ‘logo’ of the World Peace Congress as it travelled from city to city across the continent. The exhibition gives us a whole roomful of Picasso doves in a dizzying range of styles, from inky, smudgy naturalistic drawings to quick-fire sketches rendered in just a handful of perfect pen lines. The more he drew, the more abstracted they seemed to become: it was a process of stylisation that mirrors the development of many a famous logo over the years. So when people talk of Picasso’s dove of peace, it’s impossible to know which one they actually mean: branding experts today might well tear out their hair at his refusal to develop just one classic iteration of the exquisite bird.
It’s a reminder that once a brand symbol gains enough credibility and recognition in the wider world, it no longer needs to hold to the old truism that “you mustn’t touch the logo”. Google is a great contemporary example: we all know their simple, nursery-coloured masthead, but when they transform it beyond recognition to mark special days in the calendar, it certainly doesn’t seem to damage their brand. Similarly, (and apologies if the comparison seems a little trivial), Picasso’s dove was too powerful a symbol to be restricted to one universal representation, unchanging and set permanently in stone.
By the fifties, Brand Picasso was already the most electrifying and financially successful artistic marque since the Renaissance, and these values were inherent in every dove he drew, however he chose to do it. I suppose it is his signature that is the true logo here – the constant, familiar scrawl that was enough to add millions to even a modest little sketch – but let’s keep in mind the possibility that in some circumstances, the accepted Law of Branding is only one version of the advertising truth.
Picasso: Peace and Freedom is at Tate Liverpool until August 30th 2010.
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