Proteus' Children

Posterity may not rank Pablo Picasso as the greatest master of his age. But every so often, Picasso launches on a new tack apparently designed to demonstrate, with an offhand show of dazzling invention, that whatever his contemporaries can do, he can do better. Most people think of him as a painter. But when he turns his hand to sculpture, the result makes the work of most fulltime modern sculptors seem labored.

The six semi-abstract bronze Bathers at Manhattan's Fine Arts Associates last week were cast from wooden figures, the tallest close to 9 ft. high. Picasso had nailed them together after watching bathers on the Riviera--a boy with a double-bladed paddle, a man rising from the water with his snorkel pushed to the back of his head. He used discarded easels, picture frames, broomsticks, chair legs and planks, then chiseled in a few details. They parodied not only African, South Sea Island, Egyptian and Cycladic sculpture, but also windmills, signposts, machinery and, most of all, the human race. They were sculpturally erudite and at the same time wildly playful, like the later writings of James Joyce. They might be called the natural children of Proteus, that sea god who can change his shape at will, and who is clearly Picasso's familiar deity. The gallery's asking price for the group: $250,000.

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