Creative Artists and Creative Scientists: Where Does the Buck Stop?

Imagine this scenario: Picasso, an innovator of early twentieth-century modern art, is sitting in his studio in France in the 1950s. He has just received unsettling news from Spain. General Franco, the autocratic dictator long despised by Picasso, has given a nationally broadcast speech in which he praised the artist effusively. This bulletin alone, while distasteful, is not what is troubling him. Instead, he is replaying a passage from the speech in which Franco referred to one of Picasso’s recent paintings and gave his considered interpretation. Believing—not entirely incorrectly—that Picasso had a longing to reconnect with the country he had not seen in decades, Franco suggested that this latest work reflected an important turning point in Picasso’s career: unlike earlier paintings, this one represented deeply nationalist sentiments that had long lain dormant. Furthermore, Franco expressed his gratitude for Picasso’s tacit but unambiguous endorsement of the regime. For Picasso, this interpretation represented not only a complete distortion of his intent, but more dangerously, it risked co-opting his legacy and corrupting his reputation. That said, it was also true that Picasso had longed for attention and critical acclaim in his home country—so much so that he had briefly entertained accepting Franco’s invitation to stage a retrospective exhibition in Spain. Nevertheless, Picasso knew that he had to speak out—to set the record straight and put distance between him and Franco—but he also needed to do so in a way that could preserve his artistic reputation in Spain and elsewhere.