First, I agree wholeheartedly with you in regards to your remarks about much of 20th Century art. What we saw at the close of the last century was the culmination of about 100 years worth of struggle on the part of communists, anarchists, atheists and nihilists to position themselves as the arbiters of good taste. This has been documented in many places, both by the left who openly espouse it and by those who vigorously oppose them. In 1963, when the current communist goals were read into the Congressional record, there were a number of items on the list that spoke to the deliberate intent to degrade the culture as a whole by passing off meaningless, ugly artforms. It was an old, and well known tenet of the left even then.
Second, I wish to stipulate that I am not an apologist for Picasso the person - he was a misogynist of the worst order and more closely fit the grotesque stereotype of such that the left loves to foist upon conservative males. Furthermore, I would openly reject and refute his declared politics anywhere, any time and under any circumstances. I find many of his works unappealing (so did he), although in others I find true, inspired genius.
Having said all that, I do love the truth, and there are some facts that you conveniently skew or ignore altogether that are quite germane to the topic of Picasso and his art.
You state, "...he did beautiful work when he was young. And then he cynically threw that all away because he realized he could get rich by appealing to the ignorant, the decadent, and the Left."
First, I think it's intellectually dishonest to state that Picasso, "threw...away," his traditional, academic training and work; I believe (and his own words and those of his contemporaries strongly suggest) that having mastered traditional academic techniques so early in life, he simply became bored with them. His shifts in style, at least most certainly, early in his career, were the efforts to break new ground, do things in a manner that had not been done before, and by his own admission he saw some as failures and others as successes. When an entrepreneur does this in virtually any other field of endeavor, conservatives call it "innovation," and laud it as a good thing.
Let's also keep in mind that in the 20th Century, the art market has been driven by elitists and critics who embraced ugliness. Even if Picasso later engaged in the work he did for strictly mercenary reasons, it is you who cynically criticize him for having simply identified a new market and (quite successfully) servicing it. Again, this is something conservatives typically defend. If people demand SUVs, conservatives defend the rights of the auto industry to build and sell SUVs in spite of the objections of the environmentalist fringes of the left, the MSM and power hungry politicians. If people want ugly art, that desire will be serviced in a free economy. Now, we can debate the merits of that market as well as the cultural factors and the intellectual vacuity that allowed it to come into being, but I think it somewhat disingenuous for a conservative to begrudge an artist (or an automaker) for accomodating the demands of a market and refer to the profit motive as "cynical" simply because we may not like, understand or feel the same demand. I'm not a big fan of Apple products and I personally view their marketing and diehard adherents in nearly cultlike terms. I don't get all the buzz, but I don't begrudge Apple for selling the products they do. Conservatives are supposed to love rags-to-riches stories, and Picasso went through a period where he was burning his own canvasses and frames for heat. He later found a niche that made him quite wealthy, and I don't begrudge him that one bit, regardless of whether he did so with purely cynical or purely artistic motives. As per my earlier caveat, I would take issue with his communist ideals that if and where realized, would limit the ability of others to do the same, and in this regard he was certainly a hypocrite.
Humans will typically respond to any objet d'art on both an intellectual and emotional level. Different periods, styles and artists have tended to swing more in one direction or the other to varying degrees. The swindle of the 20th Century art market is that from say the Expressionist period forward, art in practice, has tended to be more on the emotional side of things (with some notable exceptions), but the critics and galleries have told (and sold) the masses that they are engaging acts of deep intellect. People feign appreciation for things they don't really appreciate, because failing to do so would (they think) be a display of ignorance or absence of sophistication. This has allowed truly inferior artists to rise to levels of influence and renown that should be unthinkable; however, this was not the case with Picasso, and in fact, I think it is in this very tension between intellect and emotion where Picasso truly displays his genius.
A good artist will paint with the intent of evoking primarily an emotional or intellectual response. A really good artist will successfully fulfill that intent with some regularity. A truly great artist will manage to pull off both in the same work. Picasso was not only capable of pulling this off, but doing so with great ease. Even in a preliminary sketch with a little pencil work he could capture a moment of intense intimacy, with tremendous technical, linear, cooly rational virtuousity...
However, this skill was not limited to his realist work, but was done with equal aptitude in his more abstract efforts. Many years ago when I was in elementary school, I remember one of our English textbooks had E.A. Poe's Eldorado juxtaposed with Picasso's Don Quixote. I was struck by the image's simplicity and power (indeed its power loomed largely in its simplicity). At the time, I had no idea that I was looking at, "a Picasso," and it was only years later after studying and doing art of my own, that I could articulate why it struck me so...
...it was the balance of emotional and rational appeal, the volume of data that was communicated in combination with the raw pathos of a sketch that looks like it was rendered in a matter of a few minutes with deceptive simplicity.
Only the most very ignorant would fail to immediately recognize the subject matter, and those only remotely familiar with Cervantes' work will immediately recognize the setting. The elegantly simple rendering immediately places one under a hot Spanish sun which virtually becomes a character in its own right, its harshness reinforced by the strong black and white contrast and absence of intermediate grays. The Hidalgo and Sancho Panza are at once pathetic, dignified, absurd and noble; their mounts echoing the character of their riders, as they prepare for battle with the windmills. Many will write it off saying, "it looks like something a child could draw," which I suppose is technically true, yet I've never seen a child, nor any other adult for that matter, pull off anything quite like it when all is said and done.