Twits who want to cancel iconic figures from history don’t know their arts from their elbow

THE cancel police have a new name on their list. Pablo Picasso, the very famous Spanish artist.

You may know him from his paintings of weird-looking women often with triangular boobs. Their heads kind of not like normal heads. It was a technique known as “cubism”.

GettyPeople trying to cancel Picasso don’t know their arts from their elbow[/caption]

And Picasso was very good at it.

Trouble is, Picasso was a bit of a lad. He didn’t behave very well towards some of the women he took as lovers.

And, boy, did he fill his boots. He was still pulling teenagers by the time he was 45 years old.

Some of his exes killed themselves. All in all, he was a bit of a cad. And a new BBC documentary reveals that some people want him written out of history for this reason.

Picasso is probably the most famous artist of the last century. He is, by most standards, a genius.

So here’s the question: How should we regard him when we know that in his personal life he was about as pure as the driven slush? My answer is that it should not remotely affect our enjoyment of his work.

Regardless of how ghastly he is, by our standards, there is no denying the brilliance. And we should not do so.

An awful lot of the world’s most famous artists have been off their rockers and some have been truly bad. Indeed, you might say it often goes with the territory.

The Italian Renaissance painter Caravaggio is a case in point. He was an utterly appalling human being. He liked nothing more than brawling in the street. He killed at least one person. And he was perpetually in debt from gambling.

But what we really remember him for is the brilliance of his work, decades ahead of its time.

Or there’s the wacko Spanish surrealist Salvador Dali. I have read quite a few biographies of ol’ Sal and the best description which comes to mind is: “Utter and complete t***er.”

A monumental egotist, a supporter of General Franco’s fascist regime in his home country.

He would pay people to perform very indecent acts for him.

You really wouldn’t invite him home to meet your mum. But without him we wouldn’t have had surrealism or pop art.

He was a striking artist and a superb draughtsman. Kind and nice Or there was Paul Gauguin, shagging his way across Tahiti and handing out a dose of syphilis to half the female population.

The problem, though, today, is that we are unable to separate the art from the artist. And this is true of books, plays and poetry as well as the visual arts. If someone was a bit of b*****d it is immediately demanded that we banish them from history.

Everyone has to be kind and nice. They have to sign up to all our modern obsessions. They have to agree with gay rights, Black Lives Matter and take the bins out when they are asked.

The difficulty here, though, it is very often the deranged who produce our most brilliant works of art.

I am not saying you have to be mad to be a great painter. But, um, it does help. Just ask Vincent van Gogh.

And it may just be that people who are absolutely pristine in their behaviour make art which is a little, um, boring?

So let’s keep enjoying Picasso, Caravaggio, Dali and the rest. Maybe without adopting them as role models for how we should live our lives.

Football far more fun with forward Frannie

GettyFrancis ‘Frannie’ Lee, the Manchester City and England striker, died this week aged 79[/caption]

FAREWELL Francis “Frannie” Lee, the Manchester City and England striker, who died this week aged 79.

We will never see his like again on a football field. Unless it’s the pub team playing on the local rec.

Frannie was a brilliant player. Towards the end of his career he was absolutely vast. But he still scored goals by the bucketload. And who can forget his wonderful punch-up with Norman “Bites Yer Legs” Hunter? They were at it hammer and tongs.

You don’t see that any more, either. These days they’d both be sent on an anger management course to sort out their toxic masculinity.

Football may have been less pretty in the 1970s, but it was far more fun.

HS2 IN LINE TO THRIVE

THE bit of HS2 that should have been scrapped was the FIRST bit from London to Birmingham.

It’s the North of England which is deprived of a decent rail network, not the South.

All that being said, I was interested to read Matthew Parris in The Times. He pointed out that the new Elizabeth Line through London is exceeding all expectations. Packed to the gills. Despite everyone moaning about how long it took to build and how much it cost.

And this led me to wonder. Has there EVER been a railway line built which, when it was completed, everyone said was a waste of money?

I can’t think of one. I wonder if we’d have felt the same about HS2?

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