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Picasso, Master of Metamorphosis
| Article
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20590 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1992 |
1,343 Words |
| Author
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Eric Gibson
Eric Gibson, art critic for the Washington Times, last wrote
on Henry Ossewa Tanner in the September 1991 issue of The
World & I. |
Picasso & Things, organized by Jean Sutherland Boggs, is one of those exhibitions that sounds ho-hum but turns out to be full of surprising revelations. The exhibition premiered at the Cleveland Museum of Art this winter, traveled to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the spring, and is currently at its last stop, the Grand Palais in Paris, where it well remain on view through December 28.
Nominally an exhibition of Picasso's still lifes, it is actually far more. Its largest revelations are in a way its most basic ones: that the still life played a central role in Picasso's art, and that he transformed the form thoroughly. Taken as a whole, the show provides insights into all of his work and, perhaps most importantly, into his attitudes toward art, the creative process, and the world around him.
If the extraordinary retrospective in 1980 at New York's Museum of Modern Art, which took up the entire museum, was the equivalent of capturing Picasso's work in a searchlight's glare, this exhibition is more like looking at it in a raking light that reveals subtleties and nuances that would otherwise be missed. And while some of the catalog entries get rather carried away in their interpretations of some of the works (others don't seem to go far enough), Picasso & Things is nonetheless an exceptional exhibition, provoking thought long after the visitor has departed.
All told, roughly 150 works were selected for the exhibition, although lenders' restrictions meant that actual numbers varied from location to location. And, as usual, not everything desired could be lent. The Museum of Modern Art's sheet metal Guitar from 1912, a pivotal work in the history of Picasso's art, Cubism, and modern sculpture (as well as Picasso's still lifes, of course) didn't appear at any venue, presumably being too fragile to travel.
Nonetheless, the equally seminal Still Life with Chair Caning, the artist's 1912 collage, was loaned by the Picasso Museum in Paris, just one example of how crucial this museum was not only to this exhibition but to Picasso studies as a whole.
Besides this collage, Picasso & Things contained a number of important works in the artist's career, almost too many to mention. The Hermitage's 1907 Still Life with Death's Head, a rarely seen proto-Cubist memento mori, was present, as was the Guggenheim Museum's Mandolin and Guitar in 1924, a landmark work on the theme of a still life placed before an open window. There was also the 1931 still life that
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