The greatest artist of the 20th Century revisited

Jay Elwes and Daniel Johnson have opened a fascinating debate. Who is the greatest artist of the Twentieth Century and what should be the criteria?

Jay writes that the greatest artist “must not only be outstanding, but must be outstanding in the most outstanding genre of the twentieth century”. For him, this rules out philosophy, poetry, even the novel, and leaves music standing alone as the most influential art form of all, ‘“the winning art form,” he writes, “the medium that, without doubt, won the twentieth century — music. Can there really be any argument? Blues. Rock n’ roll. Soul. Jazz. Hip hop. R&B. All were products of the last century. To meet a person with no interest in poetry, or painting, or sculpture wouldn’t be especially surprising. But to meet someone who didn’t like music would be a surprise, a shock, even.”

He goes on to make a more compelling argument. “The US was the dominant cultural centre of the Twentieth Century.” So, the winner has to be an American, an American musician or singer at that, and he plumps for Ella Fitzgerald. Better still, she lived through much of the Twentieth Century, from 1917-96. Best of all, she was a woman of colour. Perfect for our times.

But there is one key word missing here. Original. Fitzgerald was a great performer, not a great creator. She didn’t change the way we think about music or anything else. Her first Grammy awards in 1958 were for Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Irving Berlin Song Book and Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Duke Ellington Song Book. Irving Berlin and Duke Ellington by Ella Fitzgerald. Similarly, one of her most acclaimed albums, Ella in Berlin: Mack the Knife (1960), included songs by Rodgers & Hart, George & Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter and Brecht and Weill. They were the great creative figures.

The greatest artist of the Twentieth century has to be someone who changed the way we see, the way we think about literature, the way we listen to music. Ideally, they should also have had a long creative life which included not just one moment (Cubism, say) but a number of different phases, tremendous prolific output, and astonishing quality. They should have had enormous influence, not in terms of mere imitation, but people who realised they couldn’t carry on in the same way as before. 

Russell and Wittgenstein were great philosophers but you could be a philosopher without having to be influenced by either of them. Kafka and Proust were great writers, but you could be a writer who came after them without having to be influenced by them. Could you be a painter, after Picasso, without having to come to terms with Picasso’s legacy, without feeling what Harold Bloom famously called, “the anxiety of influence” ?

Then there’s the question of fame. I can think of many people who couldn’t name a song by Ella Fitzgerald or even recognise her name, not least because they’re too young. Can you think of anyone, even born a hundred years after he painted Les Demoiselles d ’ Avignon , who hadn’t heard of Picasso?

Something curious happened to the very idea of fame in the early Twentieth Century. It is no coincidence that many of the most famous artists, thinkers or entertainers were in their heyday before the war. Picasso, of course. TS Eliot, Chaplin, Louis Armstrong. Freud. All were born in the nineteenth century, all were famous before the war and all, curiously, were considered the most famous person in their field. There were other great poets, silent comedians and jazz players, but none were as famous as Eliot, Chaplin or ‘Satchmo’. Could you name a poem by Pound? Probably. By Eliot? Certainly. Could you draw Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd? Maybe. Chaplin? Certainly. Could you impersonate Ella Fitzgerald? No. Louis Armstrong? Of course.

Fame, originality and sheer creative power are the key tests for the greatest artist of the Twentieth Century. They have to be bound up with either the revolutions of modernism or popular culture that took place in the opening decades of the Twentieth Century. They have to be from the centres of the modern, on either side of the Atlantic. America, for sure, but also Paris, central Europe or London, the homes of modernity.

Finally, they all lived past seventy and all lived through at least the first two-thirds of the Twentieth Century (except for Freud). They became famous early, but they all lived on to enjoy a long celebrity.

There are arguments against all of them. That’s always the problem with parlour games. Has changing technology already weakened Chaplin’s fame? All those black-and-white films, no sound in many of them, those jerky movements. Is Eliot too highbrow, just too hard? If you were born in the 1940s as opposed to the 1900s wouldn’t you think the Beatles, Dylan or the Rolling Stones were greater artists than Louis Armstrong? That Rock had replaced Jazz in the hearts of a new generation?

Perhaps that leaves just Picasso. Who would claim that there has been a greater painter since? No technological change will weaken his legacy. Time has not eroded him. Almost fifty years after his death, he’s still the most famous modern painter. Many more people go to the Louvre, the Tate or MOMA now than when Picasso invented Cubism. Anyone from Buenos Aires to Hong Kong would recognise a Picasso and probably even a photo of the artist himself. Art is universal in a way that poetry and novels, bound by language, are not. Perhaps for all kinds of reasons, political, artistic, personal, Picasso remains the great artist of the Twentieth Century.