[jameshart]

And if you wanted to attribute that sentiment to some aspect of his character and/or nationality?

I can perfectly well imagine saying out loud, in conversation or in a spoken presentation, something like "Being the mercurial Spaniard that he was, Picasso said 'After Altamira, all is decadence'".

I don't think there's anything wrong with the vocabulary choices here, but there is a kind of journalistic writing style which favors brevity, probably originally because you're writing to a column inch count, and it drives writers to try to convey those extra connotations in fewer words. An editor will look at my wordy sentence, tell me to get rid of the throatclearing and filler words and reduce it to "The mercurial Spaniard said..." - and they may well be right.

[freetime2]

I would probably just omit the "mercurial Spaniard" part, which feels like fluff to me. The statement "After Altamira, all is decadence" is interesting enough that it can stand on its own without the author needing to dress it up any further or attribute it to some part of Picasso's character or nationality. Let the reader decide whether Picasso is being mercurial or how relevant it is that he is Spanish.

Or if it really is important to highlight those two attributes (it's hard to say from this single sentence), then I would probably expand it out a bit to similar to what you have done.

[jameshart]

Yes, context matters. Presumably, one is raising the Picasso quote as part of attempting to make some sort of point. Perhaps, as part of that point, one might want to provide context for why this particular comment from Picasso is relevant to the argument.

Communication is not the recitation of mere facts: "Picasso said 'after Altamira, all is decadence.' The ratio of the diameter and circumference of a circle is pi.".

Nor are we like the Tamarians of Star Trek, where mere cultural references have deeply shared denotative meaning. "Picasso, commenting on decadence after Altamira. Shaka, when the walls fell.".

We use other words around these things we say to express the thoughts in our head and try to replicate them in someone else's.

For what it's worth, here's the actual paragraph from A History of Ancient Britain in whose context this sentence was originally written:

The Upper Palaeolithic cave art of Europe was a tradition that lasted for perhaps 20,000 years and it will always be rightly described as primitive. But it is upon those anonymous artists' shoulders - giants' shoulders - that later masters like Picasso were able to stand. The mercurial Spaniard himself declared: 'After Altamira, all is decadence'.

I mean, sure, this is probably not a great use of the word 'mercurial'. Maybe the author thought that Picasso's volatile moods mean the fact that he said something so profound on such a subject lends the quote some particular poignancy? Personally, the idea that a person of a mercurial temperament might dismiss the entire arc of Western art as pointlessly indulgent seems totally in character. I suspect Byron probably said all of literature after Aristotle was repetition during one of his moods, too. So probably not the author's finest turn of phrase, for sure.

[freetime2]

Yes I think that "mercurial" is completely unnecessary in this context, and the author probably just added it because he liked the way it sounded.

Seeing the sentence in context I like it even less. The author is apparently trying to make the point that the work of Picasso and other master painters stands on the "giant" shoulders of Paleolithic cave artists. But he doesn't give much justification other than some quote from Picasso which very well may have been made tongue-in-cheek (and doesn't really support the argument in the first place), and I guess also pointing out the fact that Altamira and Picasso are both in/from Spain.

As I said above if the goal is to make a point, then I think it is worth expanding and firming up the argument. What was Picasso's relationship to Altamira? What influence did it have on his work? Are there ideas and techniques used in Paleolithic cave paintings that Picasso also used? How about other "later masters" that he references?

Possibly the author does go into more detail in subsequent paragraphs on the impact of these cave paintings on future painters - I don't know. But based on the quote above it all feels a bit hand-wavey to me. Or like Graham warns about:

> But perhaps worst of all, the complex sentences and fancy words give you, the writer, the false impression that you're saying more than you actually are.

[fsckboy]

> attribute that sentiment [mercurial] to some aspect of his character and/or nationality?

traditionally in the English speaking world, Spaniards would in general be described as mercurial (at least in the sense of being driven by passion) so saying "mercurial Spaniard" is more confusing than just saying Spaniard.