Braquish waters can run deep

IT SEEMS only a short time since Georges Braque's reputation rivalled Picasso's; they were linked together as the twin giants of Cubism, which they had largely created while still in their twenties when they worked almost as a partnership. The eminent painter-critic Patrick Heron has even gone so far as to say that while Picasso might have the greater inventive genius, Braque as a painter pure and unalloyed might eventually rank the higher of the two.

Yet in the past two decades, Braque's standing has fallen away and he is rarely mentioned, except in relation to the early Cubist era. What happened, then? One answer might be that he represented the tradition of French helle peinture which has since been severely criticised as "elitist" and bourgeois; another answer might be that with the start of the 1960s, Matisse seemed the more relevant and forward-looking artist. His flat, luminous colour recommended itself to Hard Edge abstractionists and even to Pop artists, while other aspects of his style were devoured by the New York School. Matisse became the posthumous painter-sage of the Paris School, particularly for his achievements in old age.

There was also - and there still is - a notable tendency to regard Braque as the typical pre-war revolutionary who in later life retreated under the ample umbrella of the tradition francaise, like Derain and many others. Compared with Picasso's quick-change virtuosity, he appears plodding and deliberate, working away at still-life subjects and figures in interiors in a pictorial idiom which looked increasingly safe and unchallenging. There is a good deal of truth in this, of course; Braque's outlook was to a great extent that of the artist-craftsman, devoted almost mystically to the very act of painting and to exploring its innate laws and vocabulary, rather than looking for startling subject matter or plunging into fashionable nonfigurativism.

More recently again, in the years dominated by installation art and conceptualism, he must have seemed a dinosaur. And the impact of Picasso's remarkable last pictures, which sank deep into the collective psyche of the New Expressionists, the Bad Painters et hoc genus omne, emphasised how far the two had moved apart - or, in the eyes of most people, how far behind Picasso had left his onetime gran amigo. (Yet those late Picasso paintings could scarcely have existed without the early innovations of Cubism.)

There is no overt autobiography in Braque's work, no psychological or sexual Angst, no political implications, no biting contemporary images of the kind that Bacon, Warhol, Lucian Freud in their very different ways have created. Yet he was a more profound man than any of these, probably more profound spiritually than Picasso and though Picasso had the quicker brain and the more powerful temperament of the two, Braque was the wiser head. He had also many of the qualities traditionally associated with Normans: shrewdness, taciturnity, disciplined industry, patience, stubbornness etc. Yet in his younger days he had shown signs of a violent temper (big and powerful and athletic, a good boxer, he was capable of knocking down people on occasion) and in Montmartre he had once been called "The White Negro", partly because of his appearance and partly because he was such a spectacular dancer.

BRAQUE began as a Fauvist - at least, he reckoned that his real career started with Fauvism, since he destroyed most of his juvenilia. The phase did not last long, especially when he began to react to Cezanne's innovations and also to discover African and primitive art. Picasso may have painted the first strictly Cubist pictures but plainly Braque was headed firmly along the same road when they finally came together as a team.

Their relationship for the following few crucial years must be unique in painting; setting out jointly on the Cubist adventure they were, as Picasso said many years later, like two mountaineers roped together. Even today, scholars of the period sometimes find it hard to separate their respective styles and there are various Cubist masterpieces which could be the work of either.

This period of Braque's career is almost over-exposed by now and has been canonical for decades; it laid the foundation for his reputation and was enormously influential for the future. After that, in the opinion of many or most art historians, he fell away but is it that simple? It is scarcely possible (or sensible) to be a revolutionary for a whole lifetime and Picasso himself turned to NeoClassicism after the first World War, in the company of many others.

The years between the two world wars were as unsettled and unsettling in art as they were in European politics. It was generally realised that some equilibrium had to be reached between revolution and tradition, anarchy and order, but exactly what and how? In the long run, each major artist had to work out his own, individual solution and this exhibition proves that Braque in his middle years found his and went on from there.

Braque did stop being a revolutionary but he was never a reactionary and he never became tame or timid. He applied the discoveries he had made and went on quietly, obstinately enlarging on them, in the field of still life, figure painting (though none of his so-called Canephorae are included in this exhibition), interiors etc. He hated Renaissance perspective, which he claimed was false to what he saw in front of and around him, so what is fascinating in his later paintings is the careful, obdurate exploration of space and light, the relation of objects to one another and how they advance or recede to the eye.

He made a marvellous conquest of spatial relations, yet he was able to combine this with the Modernist flat surface while giving to contrasting objects and things their unique textures and essences (to achieve this he varied his brush-work greatly, sometimes inside a single picture, so turning his back on the generalised brushstrokes of Impressionism). He also grew into a strong, resonant colourist - though rooted in the earth colours - who could weave a complex tonal tapestry, though. A careful, deliberate craftsman, he often kept works for long periods in the studio, brooding over them reworking or touching them up, giving them organic layers of meaning.

The late Studio series, with their great white birds which seem like messengers or presences from another world, are profound and slightly mystical - we seem to be at the very core of artistic inspiration. But there was also a Fauve and an Expressionist buried inside him somewhere, which came out periodically in small, intense pictures of flowers, boats, women, while the very late, heavily impastoed paintings of ploughs and seashores are close to van Gogh. The earthy force and ruggedness of these give the lie to the view of Braque as essentially a kind of conservative, salon Modernist backing on his tracks.

Right to the end, he forced himself onwards to sound out new territory. And while he may relate to the French still-life tradition that goes back to Chardin at least, there is a primitive, animistic pulse throughout much of his work which would have made the 18th century extremely uncomfortable and is certainly not native to the French bourgeoisie. Braque, that big, quiet-spoken, scrupulously dressed man, had his own inner volcano, though in contrast to Picasso, the lava flowed into his art only and not into his personal life. He was also a deeply cultured man, something which is not widely realised, and was close to many French poets whose work he illustrated, or more accurately collaborated with. They included Pierre Reverdy, Renee Char and Francois Ponge - an impressive trio, all of whom wrote about his work. Braquish waters can run deep.