Note: I have now seen all four of the current Picasso exhibitions and they are posted here in the reverse order in which I saw them, that having to do with the order in which they were written and posted. I believe they will make sense if read in this order. gm.
Many years ago I realized that one could get some kind of education in the arts by attending museum lectures and while I have always thought that that was a very good idea, when I saw the announcement for the series of three Picasso lectures accompanying this exhibition, I realized that in fifty years of visiting the Met I had never once stepped into the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium. (My road to hell is otherwise handsomely paved as well.) Because I am so curious at present about the works of Picasso I decided to order tickets at once.
Recently I found the Met Museum page on You Tube and so I wondered if I might not be paying good money for something I could see for free on the internet, but as an old theatergoer I know that there is a difference between seeing something “live” and something on tape or film. And in this case there was a big difference. I have seen the speaker, Gary Tinterow, Englehard Chairman of Nineteenth and Twentieth century and Contemporary Art, on some of the You Tube tapes, but seeing him in person was a very different experience. On tape he looks small. (The camera is above him and looking down. Big mistake.). But in person he is large and has a commanding presence. He is also very amiable, he has a rich baritone voice, and he relates in a very professional and personal way to the members of the audience which charm he does not always have when speaking directly to a machine that only stares at him. He is an ideal spokesperson for the museum …the listener feels himself included in the work of the organization.
After the second lecture I bought the catalogue for the exhibition and when I got it home and began reading it I realized that Mr. Tinterow was merely repeating to us, seemingly without notes, the material that it contained. So it then became my hope that he might offer something in the way of an aside or two that would justify the expense and effort of my lecture-going. He did.
I would say that the most exciting moment in these lectures was that time when he first used the word “quotation”. When discussing architecture it is common for repeated and familiar details and forms in new buildings to be spoken of as references or as “quotations” of other and usually earlier works. Yet when discussing Picasso’s work it is most commonly said that he stole ideas from this person or that, theft being inferred as his common coin. Only a year ago I heard a docent at MOMA telling his tour group that Picasso would steal anything that wasn’t nailed down. I was livid. Quotation! Quotation! Quotation! Well, bless Gary Tinterow for using the correct language. I hope this becomes standard museum practice …all over town!
He mentioned on two occasions that Picasso was an intellectual and an avid reader and specifically that he read Freud extensively. I would also think that he had read Carl Jung. Picasso makes so many references to classical mythology and to the figures within those mythologies that I would think he was working in his own way with components of the collective unconscious.
He mentioned that Picasso often used classical paintings or drawings as a source for making a new painting, that it merely offered him a starting point for a drawing or painting. That, I think, is an insight that needs to be followed up in regard to Picasso’s work. Yes he did reference or quote other works, as most artists have done, and he did it throughout his lifetime, not just in the series from master paintings he did late in his life. Despite those references he made the work his by working in his own painting vocabulary and by using the source as a means to express his feelings about something. But his is decidedly painting that often originates inside a museum and I am aware of his admiration for Cezanne and of Cezanne’s admonition to painters to get out of the museum and to redo Poussin “from life”. This dichotomy in Picasso’s work …from life/from paintings … is a very good area for future study.
Discussing the works of the young Picasso Gary Tinterow showed slides of the works that had inspired him, works by Puvis de Chavannes, El Greco, Gauguin, and Toulouse Lautrec. What he did not mention but which was immediately apparent to me, sitting at a distance in the audience, was that all of those artists had one thing in common, beyond the fact that they were all very popular at that time, an attainment that would not have been lost on the very ambitious young Spaniard: namely, that each made very passive paintings. As a result we can see that same passivity in Picasso’s imitation Lautrec’s, and in his blue and rose period works. It is almost as if the young artist was tentative in all that he did, not quite certain exactly where he wanted to go with his talent. Quoting those particular passive painters gave him breathing space.
I say breathing space because originally when Picasso left Barcelona he had wanted to go to Munich but did not have the money to do so. Munich at that time was where all the action was in regard to modern painting. Paris, though desirable, was his second choice. (In American art see Marsden Hartley). And I say breathing space because of the fact that Picasso had been trained as an academic painter…he needed a period of time to feel his way into “something” different, if not different, something that spoke exclusively to his moment in time, to his “age”.
Another area where I think Picasso scholarship could focus its inquiry is in the way that Picasso painted. Having been trained academically his imitation and referencing earlier and well regarded modern painters would have shown him alternative methods for creating works on canvas with paint. The fame and approval given to the other painters would have legitimized his first explorations of similar paint application. In looking at the paintings in the galleries it can be seen that early on Picasso worked in a number of methods …from thin washes to thick impastos …and sometimes both. One of the very wonderful aspect of the catalogue is that for each work listed and shown there is at the end of each entry a set of technical notes describing in detail how each painting and drawing was made and with what and on what materials.
In regard to that “something” different I think we can accept as true the observation that from the 1907 Paris exhibition of Cezanne’s paintings Picasso would have seen that the surfaces of those paintings were not flat and passive but that they were broken up into a rhythmic dynamic. Picasso first exhibited his concept of surface dynamic in the cubist works he made with Braque beginning just after that exhibition.
I think if one were to follow his development as a painter, one would find that there are two dominates in his work: that which is expressed and the concept which permits the expressiveness. While the concept is very important I think it does not have more weight than the expressiveness. A third element of a painting, the finish, seems to have been of less importance to him.
As for his copying the “masters” of his day I was reminded of Emerson’s essay, The Uses of Great Men, in which he encouraged young artists and future public figures to choose a hero from the pantheon of great men and to model one’s life, to role play, until one found his own voice. The danger of this, of course was suggested by Ezra Pound who warned that many young writers begin their careers by imitating writers they admire and that most writers never get beyond this initial stage of imitation.
Finally, I was hoping that something would be said that would help me to better understand cubism. It is often spoken of as an amalgamation of different views of the same subject. While that might be true of the subject in the center of the format, it does nothing to explain those areas of the format between the subject and the edges of the format, the surround. One comment that Gary Tinterow made that I appreciated, was that in his referencing African art, Picasso was using repeated shapes, rhymes, from the figure, and incorporating them into the surround. Good clue. Add to that Cezanne’s surface dynamic and I think we might be on to something.
Before moving into the galleries, I want to repeat what was said at the opening of the lectures. With the economy being what it is there has been much talk about museums doing exhibitions now from their holdings as this is generally thought to be less expensive. Mr. Tinterow told us that in this case it was not. Every Picasso work in the museum was studied, reevaluated, and cleaned. All of the prints were reframed. He said that in the end the work done cost many times more than a loan exhibition would have cost.
In the New York Times review of the show the writer commented that by putting all of the Picasso works on view the museum and the benefactors could get a very clear idea what areas of this collection needed to be enhanced and expanded. While that might seem cynical on the face of it, it does seem a good idea nonetheless. Gary Tinterow stated that the museum collection was one of three in this country that covered the full range of Picasso’s career. Picasso is credited with having created thousands of art works …sometimes as many as 30,000. Despite its breadth of about 500 art works, (by contrast the Picasso Museum in Paris has three thousand works), in sum this collection looks very thin.
In part that has to do with an agreement back in the 40’s and 50’s among the three leading museums in New York City. But that is another story. If the Met Museum is at fault it is because some fifty years have passed since that agreement ended and it appears that they have not increased their Picasso holdings. As for there being Picasso works on the market I think any six paintings from the Late Paintings Exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery a year ago would make an obviously handsome addition to this collection. (See this blog, April 2009.)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art cares for 34 Picasso paintings, 58 drawings, watercolors, and pastels, 2 sculptures, 10 ceramic plaques, and 400 Picasso prints. Seen altogether this is a very impressive collection. Yet considering the venue, one of the world’s foremost art museums, it seems inadequate. Perhaps the most stunning painting is the iconic and well known Gertrude Stein portrait. But there are others that are almost equally as good …Seated Harlequin, 1901, The Blind Man’s Meal, 1903, The Actor, 1905, Bust of a Man, 1908, Still Life with Bottle of Rum, 1911, (apparently one of only three analytic cubist paintings in the collection, albeit a very good one …but I can see five to a dozen in any other museum …you get my drift.), Woman in White, 1923, Mandolin, Fruit Bowl and Plaster Arm, 1925, Harlequin, 1927, Head of a Woman, 1927, The Dreamer, 1932, Reading at a Table, 1934, Woman and Musketeer, 1967. All of these are absolutely wonderful but, again, this is the Met, and with all of these filling, let’s say, Gallery One, lacking a Gallery 2, one feels himself coming up short much sooner than he had expected.
Among the best drawings are works from the Alfred Stieglitz collection, given to the museum in 1949 by Georgia O’Keefe. (See also the Philadelphia Museum Picasso exhibition below.) Considering the art works I’ve seen in the last year from these bequests to various museums I can’t think of an exhibition I would rather see than to have all of those works together again. Mr. Stieglitz seems to me to have had the very best eye of the twentieth century. Encore. Encore.
One wonderful surprise in this exhibition was the discovery of such a large number of pastels. Pastel is one of my favorite mediums and I had no idea that Picasso had made any if not so many. Each of them is splendid. Unlike his paintings, which often have the quality of having been dashed off in an afternoon, each of these looks to have been lovingly and carefully laid on the paper in a very academic frame of mind …Shades of Chardin! These raised a thousand questions but I won’t ask them here.
The gallery of cubist works is arranged in the order in which the works were made and it gives tremendous insight into the development of cubism and into the mind of the artist and what he was attempting to do.
One of the most exciting moments of this exhibition was walking into a gallery and being overwhelmed by number of prints on display from the 347 Suite. While it is only 118 prints filling a very large room, it seemed to be many hundreds more. I was reminded of Oscar Wilde’s dictum: Nothing succeeds like excess. Picasso is considered one of the great twentieth century draughtsman credited with having created over 2,500 prints. The gallery with the 347 Suite brought home a small indication of the magnitude of that achievement.
I was also favorably impressed by the lighting in this gallery. Once again a museum is using the permanent ceiling track lights but here the lamps are closer to the wall, they are used to create a wall wash rather than to highlight each art work, and as a result there are no glaring reflections of light fixtures and no reflection of the viewer in the glass over the art works. I don’t know why other art museum cannot resolve the problems with their lighting in such a simple manner.
But the highlight of this exhibition was, for me, the Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kramer Collection of Picasso Linocuts. Over the years I have seen Picasso linocuts in books, but only a few of them, and I had no idea that he had made so many. In total, I believe, there are about 150 in this series. The Kramer collection has 140 of them. The linoleum surface is without grain and practically without resistant and to see what Picasso has carved into them, using what I ascertain from all of his work as his preference for a thick line, and printed in a very limited palette, is stunning. It is especially stunning when so many are seen occupying a single gallery.
One of the great pleasures I find in museum going is to be introduced to collections of works with a very limited focus …I think of the Bergman Collection of Contemporary Drawings in the Chicago Art Institute and the Schnitzler Collection of Han Dynasty tomb figures in the museum in Portland, Oregon. More so than the larger collections, the Chester Dale’s and the Samuel Kress’s, I find these small collections to be far more personal and exciting. Rather than overwhelming they are inspiring.
This is an excellent exhibition, well designed and laid out, well interpreted, and with good, professional lighting.
This is a link to a tour of the exhibit on You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/metmuseum
This is the link to the Met Museum page featuring the Picasso exhibit:
http://www.metmuseum.org/special/se_event.asp?OccurrenceId={CD70B3F0-D1B8-4501-9B63-085D213E0E9B}&HomePageLink=special_c2a
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Celebrating the Muse; the Women in Picasso's Prints. The Marlboro Gallery, NYC
About twenty five years ago I began a more concentrated study of modern art than I had done prior to that time, especially the life and works of Cezanne, Matisse, and Picasso. It soon became apparent to me that there were two schools of thought in which it was claimed that either Matisse or Picasso was the greatest artist of the twentieth century. In 1986 I visited the Pompidou Center where I saw the late, magnificent Matisse papiers colles, and on the next day I saw the nearby Picasso Museum. The strongest impression made in the latter venue was the ubiquitous presence of women in his art works and what I strongly felt was the artist’s blatant hatred for them. Comparing the work of the two artists seen back to back and considering the strong distaste I felt for the Spaniard’s misogyny decided me to throw my support to the Matisse camp.
However: on a visit to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2005, merely reading the title for their permanent collection, From Matisse to the Present, and seeing a collection with an almost glaring omission of the work of Picasso, made me aware that with Matisse we might have some very pretty paintings but that without Picasso there is no modern art. In the insight of that moment Picasso rose to the summit of the pantheon. I have not however been able to divest myself of what I have perceived of as his strong misogyny; not, that is, until I began reading the Richardson biographies and especially not until I saw the exhibition at this gallery.
Richardson brings to our attention Picasso’s habit of using the women in his life as his present subject matter. Sometimes this is overt and obvious and at other times the identity of the subject is hidden or coded. And what is very clearly stated in all of those works, as it is in Picasso’s works as a whole, is that the artist has been very forthright and honest about expressing his feelings about his subject matter, in this case the woman who is the subject …whether those feelings are anger, tenderness, or more complex and conflicted.
When reading about Picasso’s early years I think there is a tendency for us to look on those years from the perspective of what we know of the later years. We might indeed be aware of his poverty, his hunger, and his struggles, but knowing that it all turned out well in the end lessens our understanding and our full appreciation of the reality of those years for him.
Those of us who have been to Paris are well aware that the Parisians can be among the rudest and most unfriendly persons on earth. If we do not speak Parisian French, god help us. The young Picasso did not speak French and so he would not have been made to feel welcome in his travels about the city. In addition he was extremely short …about five foot four. This would not have made him attractive to the women there, and for Picasso, who had a very strong attraction to women as well as a dependency from having been an only son, this would have been alienating as well. Living on a very meager income, if not in abject poverty, he would have felt a further alienation as he looked about him upon the glories of fin de siècle Paris. To find himself in Paris, in a foreign culture, without sympathy, without recognition, and without succor, must have been extremely unsettling for him.
He did have friends. He had traveled to Paris with friends from Barcelona; he lived in the Catalan section of Paris. But all of these friends appear to have been male. His first friends in Paris and his first patrons were males and they were almost exclusively homosexual males. At that time homosexuality was a criminal offense. While there might have been some encouragement from these early supporters, knowing that they were social outcasts might have mitigated the sense of support he received from them.
There was also, according to Richardson, a period of drug use, specifically opium, among his new found French friends. While that might be explained as a socially acceptable thing to do among members of that set, there are so many in similar circumstances who do not take drugs that we might consider agreeing with the view that drug abuse is a form of self medication: one takes drugs because he doesn’t feel well.
All of these feelings of alienation and isolation are evident in Picasso’s work of that period. Among the influences we can see evidence of Puvis de Chavannes, El Greco, Toulouse Lautrec, and Gauguin. But while we see the influences we are aware that he has only used them to make works like works of theirs that he has seen, in few of them does he make the work his own. When he does, notably in the Blue Period, the works are extremely morose, if not morbid.
Clearly it was a period of despair and many sources attribute this to the death of his friend Casagemas. I think it is more likely that all of these factors contributed to his mood. And I think the only thing that likely kept him going was his desire to be an artist, and not merely an artist, but among the greatest of the artists …clearly a result of his family engendered sense of entitlement. …yes, young Caesar was ambitious.
In 1904 this all began to change. Not because he was just naturally moving on as an artist but because of the events in his personal life. In that year he met Fernande Olivier and began his first extended intimate relationship. Socially he began to be not merely a member of an exclusively male crowd but a man among men and women. With Fernande on his arm his Spanish male pride could be asserted.
From that time there is a lighter palette, a lightening of subject matter …his subjects are now the living rather than the dead and the dying. Something has opened him up and given him light and air. The work began to pour out of him …the saltimbanques, the Rose period…so much so that we might say he had been inspired.
In 1906 Picasso and Fernande spent the summer in Spain, in the village of Gosol. I think most sources consider this the moment when Picasso began to master modern art. From that time he first exhibited his responses to ethnic and prehistoric art and a new understanding of classical art. There followed very shortly his work with Braque which resulted in cubism. Fernande figures in many of the paintings of the Gosol period. In the catalogue for the Marlboro exhibition, Plate1, Tète de Femme, 1905, is, I believe, Fernande, in a very sweet, sensual, and loving portrait. Because of her presence in his life at that time I think it would be correct to think of Fernande as the first muse in his life … She salvaged him, she resurrected him, she inspired him, but most importantly she gave him permission to be creative.
From my own experience I know that a companion, a mate, can be a muse, an inspiration, or a completely destructive force, often both simultaneously. And while it was once common to refer to “the little woman” behind the successful man, there are probably many, many abject failures over the centuries who followed the siren’s lure of a jealous, possessive, selfishly misguided mate.
In Picasso’s life, where there were so many women with whom he was intimate, perhaps we should not think that he was by nature simply promiscuous, as most men are, but that like the well known artist’s works he studied and drew inspiration from, he might have exhausted the source of inspiration from each of those women as well. Thus not one woman but many women inspired him over the years and played the part of his muse.
As common as the presence of women in his work is the presence of the personal in his work; Picasso’s work is a life record of his emotional experience. Because women tend to be more concerned with the emotional temperature of their relationships than their men do …or so women have told me …it is tempting to think that it was the women in his life who encouraged him to be honest with them, with himself, and in his work. Clearly those women meant something to him and I think it behooves us to consider their individuality rather than to look on him as a man who used them for his own ends. Every relationship is an entity created by the other entities which compose the relationship, in this case by the man and by the woman. While Picasso might have found inspiration from each of the women who passed through his life, so did each of them find something of personal value in their relationship with him. But rather than viewing his life and work from the perspective of a sting of women subject to his whims, let’s give each of those women their individuality and agree that there is another perspective …that of individual women who over the course of their lives had at one time an intimate contact with an artist named Picasso.
Let’s think of all this as the experience of a very complex and talented genius who has enriched our lives and simply consider all of it as the story behind some remarkably magnificent art works, works that stand on their own whatever their inspiration might have been. That of course is always the test: does the work stand on its own? Is this drawing interesting as a drawing?
The Marlboro Gallery has mounted an exhibition of 205 Picasso prints featuring the women in his life, each described here as the muse of the moment. I don’t remember seeing one drawing here that was not interesting. And what struck me immediately was that there is no sense of misogyny in any of them. In fact the opposite is true: he loved these women, each in her turn. And working with them as the subject of drawings, of art works, he has made some incredibly wonderful art works.
In 2005 I saw the Vollard Suite at the Fort Worth Museum of Contemporary Art. It was my first encounter with an extended exhibition of his prints and I was bowled over by his sheer delight in seeing the results that issued from his marking device moving across the surface of a ground spilling out the contents of his imagination. Seen as components in an extended narrative each print was an arabesque of delight. I had not realized before seeing them again here at the Marlboro Gallery that Marie-Therese had been the inspiration for them, or if not the inspiration, that she had played so large a part in their ebullience. And seeing them again I suddenly realized that almost every one of them featured a little bowl of flowers. I had never suspected that Picasso could have been so … “sweet”.
Gary Tinterow, in his talk at the Metropolitan, mentioned on two occasions that Picasso had read Freud’s work avidly and was quite an adherent of his insights. If so, one can see humor in the 347 Suite: Freud has gone on record with the statement that the only unnatural sexual act is an act one cannot get into a position to perform. In this suite, which is blatantly sexual, executed when he was 87, Picasso shows us that there is in fact no position one cannot get into in order to fuck. I think Freud would have been amused. I know I was.
But all of these prints are wonderful. It is a full career retrospective and we are able to share in the artist’s delight in his subject matter and in his process, and to empathize with his emotional experience. In his book, Modern Prints and Drawings, Paul Sachs lists his criterion for determining the success of drawings and prints: is there clarity of form, is there flexibility and sensitiveness of touch, is there expressiveness, is there feeling for the medium, etc. In all of these prints the answers are yes. But there is an especial yes in the feeling for the medium: each medium has elicited from the artist a unique response that could only have been expressed in that particular medium. While the subject remains somewhat the same, the woman, the muse, the whole variety of the print making media is needed for this artist to honestly express his multifaceted emotional experience. And, in the end, I think it is that, his profound expressiveness, which earns for Picasso the title of the greatest artist of the twentieth century.
There are two things that enhance the pleasure of the seeing here. One of them is the gallery itself. This is a large space, basically a square divided into nine sections. On the north, east, and south walls there are large floor to ceiling windows. Thus the galleries are flooded with both natural and artificial light. There is a wonderful sense of variation in moving into and out of open and closed spaces. There is a wonderful sense of light and air in every part of the galley. There were no glaring lights on the glass nor were there reflections of the observer over the art works. Bravo!
But what was most wonderful the day I was there was that I was the only person there. (Later two others, each with a profound respect for quiet, ventured in.) Fifty years ago when I was new to New York, before museums became big time players in the tourist industry, this is what museums were like. Alas, alas, and rue the day! But perhaps that is the answer for those of us who appreciate seeing the fine arts: from now on let’s confine our fine art viewing to commercial galleries and let museums continue to rush headlong to their own self destruction. As ye sow…
Excellent. Excellent! Unfortunately this has now closed in New York. But it will be opening soon in London. If you have nothing better to do this summer…
http://www.marlboroughgallery.com/exhibitions/celebrating-the-muse-women-in-picassos-prints-from-1905-1968
However: on a visit to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2005, merely reading the title for their permanent collection, From Matisse to the Present, and seeing a collection with an almost glaring omission of the work of Picasso, made me aware that with Matisse we might have some very pretty paintings but that without Picasso there is no modern art. In the insight of that moment Picasso rose to the summit of the pantheon. I have not however been able to divest myself of what I have perceived of as his strong misogyny; not, that is, until I began reading the Richardson biographies and especially not until I saw the exhibition at this gallery.
Richardson brings to our attention Picasso’s habit of using the women in his life as his present subject matter. Sometimes this is overt and obvious and at other times the identity of the subject is hidden or coded. And what is very clearly stated in all of those works, as it is in Picasso’s works as a whole, is that the artist has been very forthright and honest about expressing his feelings about his subject matter, in this case the woman who is the subject …whether those feelings are anger, tenderness, or more complex and conflicted.
When reading about Picasso’s early years I think there is a tendency for us to look on those years from the perspective of what we know of the later years. We might indeed be aware of his poverty, his hunger, and his struggles, but knowing that it all turned out well in the end lessens our understanding and our full appreciation of the reality of those years for him.
Those of us who have been to Paris are well aware that the Parisians can be among the rudest and most unfriendly persons on earth. If we do not speak Parisian French, god help us. The young Picasso did not speak French and so he would not have been made to feel welcome in his travels about the city. In addition he was extremely short …about five foot four. This would not have made him attractive to the women there, and for Picasso, who had a very strong attraction to women as well as a dependency from having been an only son, this would have been alienating as well. Living on a very meager income, if not in abject poverty, he would have felt a further alienation as he looked about him upon the glories of fin de siècle Paris. To find himself in Paris, in a foreign culture, without sympathy, without recognition, and without succor, must have been extremely unsettling for him.
He did have friends. He had traveled to Paris with friends from Barcelona; he lived in the Catalan section of Paris. But all of these friends appear to have been male. His first friends in Paris and his first patrons were males and they were almost exclusively homosexual males. At that time homosexuality was a criminal offense. While there might have been some encouragement from these early supporters, knowing that they were social outcasts might have mitigated the sense of support he received from them.
There was also, according to Richardson, a period of drug use, specifically opium, among his new found French friends. While that might be explained as a socially acceptable thing to do among members of that set, there are so many in similar circumstances who do not take drugs that we might consider agreeing with the view that drug abuse is a form of self medication: one takes drugs because he doesn’t feel well.
All of these feelings of alienation and isolation are evident in Picasso’s work of that period. Among the influences we can see evidence of Puvis de Chavannes, El Greco, Toulouse Lautrec, and Gauguin. But while we see the influences we are aware that he has only used them to make works like works of theirs that he has seen, in few of them does he make the work his own. When he does, notably in the Blue Period, the works are extremely morose, if not morbid.
Clearly it was a period of despair and many sources attribute this to the death of his friend Casagemas. I think it is more likely that all of these factors contributed to his mood. And I think the only thing that likely kept him going was his desire to be an artist, and not merely an artist, but among the greatest of the artists …clearly a result of his family engendered sense of entitlement. …yes, young Caesar was ambitious.
In 1904 this all began to change. Not because he was just naturally moving on as an artist but because of the events in his personal life. In that year he met Fernande Olivier and began his first extended intimate relationship. Socially he began to be not merely a member of an exclusively male crowd but a man among men and women. With Fernande on his arm his Spanish male pride could be asserted.
From that time there is a lighter palette, a lightening of subject matter …his subjects are now the living rather than the dead and the dying. Something has opened him up and given him light and air. The work began to pour out of him …the saltimbanques, the Rose period…so much so that we might say he had been inspired.
In 1906 Picasso and Fernande spent the summer in Spain, in the village of Gosol. I think most sources consider this the moment when Picasso began to master modern art. From that time he first exhibited his responses to ethnic and prehistoric art and a new understanding of classical art. There followed very shortly his work with Braque which resulted in cubism. Fernande figures in many of the paintings of the Gosol period. In the catalogue for the Marlboro exhibition, Plate1, Tète de Femme, 1905, is, I believe, Fernande, in a very sweet, sensual, and loving portrait. Because of her presence in his life at that time I think it would be correct to think of Fernande as the first muse in his life … She salvaged him, she resurrected him, she inspired him, but most importantly she gave him permission to be creative.
From my own experience I know that a companion, a mate, can be a muse, an inspiration, or a completely destructive force, often both simultaneously. And while it was once common to refer to “the little woman” behind the successful man, there are probably many, many abject failures over the centuries who followed the siren’s lure of a jealous, possessive, selfishly misguided mate.
In Picasso’s life, where there were so many women with whom he was intimate, perhaps we should not think that he was by nature simply promiscuous, as most men are, but that like the well known artist’s works he studied and drew inspiration from, he might have exhausted the source of inspiration from each of those women as well. Thus not one woman but many women inspired him over the years and played the part of his muse.
As common as the presence of women in his work is the presence of the personal in his work; Picasso’s work is a life record of his emotional experience. Because women tend to be more concerned with the emotional temperature of their relationships than their men do …or so women have told me …it is tempting to think that it was the women in his life who encouraged him to be honest with them, with himself, and in his work. Clearly those women meant something to him and I think it behooves us to consider their individuality rather than to look on him as a man who used them for his own ends. Every relationship is an entity created by the other entities which compose the relationship, in this case by the man and by the woman. While Picasso might have found inspiration from each of the women who passed through his life, so did each of them find something of personal value in their relationship with him. But rather than viewing his life and work from the perspective of a sting of women subject to his whims, let’s give each of those women their individuality and agree that there is another perspective …that of individual women who over the course of their lives had at one time an intimate contact with an artist named Picasso.
Let’s think of all this as the experience of a very complex and talented genius who has enriched our lives and simply consider all of it as the story behind some remarkably magnificent art works, works that stand on their own whatever their inspiration might have been. That of course is always the test: does the work stand on its own? Is this drawing interesting as a drawing?
The Marlboro Gallery has mounted an exhibition of 205 Picasso prints featuring the women in his life, each described here as the muse of the moment. I don’t remember seeing one drawing here that was not interesting. And what struck me immediately was that there is no sense of misogyny in any of them. In fact the opposite is true: he loved these women, each in her turn. And working with them as the subject of drawings, of art works, he has made some incredibly wonderful art works.
In 2005 I saw the Vollard Suite at the Fort Worth Museum of Contemporary Art. It was my first encounter with an extended exhibition of his prints and I was bowled over by his sheer delight in seeing the results that issued from his marking device moving across the surface of a ground spilling out the contents of his imagination. Seen as components in an extended narrative each print was an arabesque of delight. I had not realized before seeing them again here at the Marlboro Gallery that Marie-Therese had been the inspiration for them, or if not the inspiration, that she had played so large a part in their ebullience. And seeing them again I suddenly realized that almost every one of them featured a little bowl of flowers. I had never suspected that Picasso could have been so … “sweet”.
Gary Tinterow, in his talk at the Metropolitan, mentioned on two occasions that Picasso had read Freud’s work avidly and was quite an adherent of his insights. If so, one can see humor in the 347 Suite: Freud has gone on record with the statement that the only unnatural sexual act is an act one cannot get into a position to perform. In this suite, which is blatantly sexual, executed when he was 87, Picasso shows us that there is in fact no position one cannot get into in order to fuck. I think Freud would have been amused. I know I was.
But all of these prints are wonderful. It is a full career retrospective and we are able to share in the artist’s delight in his subject matter and in his process, and to empathize with his emotional experience. In his book, Modern Prints and Drawings, Paul Sachs lists his criterion for determining the success of drawings and prints: is there clarity of form, is there flexibility and sensitiveness of touch, is there expressiveness, is there feeling for the medium, etc. In all of these prints the answers are yes. But there is an especial yes in the feeling for the medium: each medium has elicited from the artist a unique response that could only have been expressed in that particular medium. While the subject remains somewhat the same, the woman, the muse, the whole variety of the print making media is needed for this artist to honestly express his multifaceted emotional experience. And, in the end, I think it is that, his profound expressiveness, which earns for Picasso the title of the greatest artist of the twentieth century.
There are two things that enhance the pleasure of the seeing here. One of them is the gallery itself. This is a large space, basically a square divided into nine sections. On the north, east, and south walls there are large floor to ceiling windows. Thus the galleries are flooded with both natural and artificial light. There is a wonderful sense of variation in moving into and out of open and closed spaces. There is a wonderful sense of light and air in every part of the galley. There were no glaring lights on the glass nor were there reflections of the observer over the art works. Bravo!
But what was most wonderful the day I was there was that I was the only person there. (Later two others, each with a profound respect for quiet, ventured in.) Fifty years ago when I was new to New York, before museums became big time players in the tourist industry, this is what museums were like. Alas, alas, and rue the day! But perhaps that is the answer for those of us who appreciate seeing the fine arts: from now on let’s confine our fine art viewing to commercial galleries and let museums continue to rush headlong to their own self destruction. As ye sow…
Excellent. Excellent! Unfortunately this has now closed in New York. But it will be opening soon in London. If you have nothing better to do this summer…
http://www.marlboroughgallery.com/exhibitions/celebrating-the-muse-women-in-picassos-prints-from-1905-1968
Picasso: Themes and Variations, The Museum of Modern Art, NYC.
Picasso: Themes ands Variations
I have made my last visit to what was once known as The Museum of Modern Art, New York City. It has become nothing more now than a hyped up tourist venue down there with Times Square, the Empire State Building, and Coney Island.
On the day of my last visit, Monday, May 3rd, I discovered that if the building can comfortably accommodate one thousand visitors, they think nothing of packing in twelve to fifteen thousand people. The scene inside is a nightmare.
I was hoping to see the exhibition of Picasso prints but that gallery was so full of slowly shuffling zombies circulating in such a tight mass absolutely nothing could be seen but the wall high above the framed works.
Thinking I might catch something on the 5th Floor at the Henri Bresson exhibit I found a dead end room, sweltering with the heat of body humidity and packed as tightly as a subway at rush hour. Again, zombies.
Stopping on the way down at the early twentieth century painting gallery I merely threw myself into the surging mass, lifted my feet and let them carry me where they would.
The escalators, when you can find them, looked like scenes of the damned in Metropolis.
I would have lodged a complaint with the management but obviously they are Making Money and in America Making Money is the only measure of success. I am sure my complaint would have fallen on deaf ears. My only riposte could have been to quote H.L. Menken: No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people. But I also noticed that all of these folks were speaking in foreign tongues. So perhaps it is the triumph of the American Century…our lack of taste and our vulgar commercialization of absolutely everything is now the basis of a world culture.
Well you can have it folks. I’ve had my fill of it. There is no better example of Reagan Republican sleaze and greed anywhere… so get out there, MOMA, and drill into the deep pockets of all those globe trotting wealthy tourists …drill, baby, drill.
Absolutely nothing could ever induce me to step into this place again. Fine art venue? I don’t think so.
http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/966
I have made my last visit to what was once known as The Museum of Modern Art, New York City. It has become nothing more now than a hyped up tourist venue down there with Times Square, the Empire State Building, and Coney Island.
On the day of my last visit, Monday, May 3rd, I discovered that if the building can comfortably accommodate one thousand visitors, they think nothing of packing in twelve to fifteen thousand people. The scene inside is a nightmare.
I was hoping to see the exhibition of Picasso prints but that gallery was so full of slowly shuffling zombies circulating in such a tight mass absolutely nothing could be seen but the wall high above the framed works.
Thinking I might catch something on the 5th Floor at the Henri Bresson exhibit I found a dead end room, sweltering with the heat of body humidity and packed as tightly as a subway at rush hour. Again, zombies.
Stopping on the way down at the early twentieth century painting gallery I merely threw myself into the surging mass, lifted my feet and let them carry me where they would.
The escalators, when you can find them, looked like scenes of the damned in Metropolis.
I would have lodged a complaint with the management but obviously they are Making Money and in America Making Money is the only measure of success. I am sure my complaint would have fallen on deaf ears. My only riposte could have been to quote H.L. Menken: No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people. But I also noticed that all of these folks were speaking in foreign tongues. So perhaps it is the triumph of the American Century…our lack of taste and our vulgar commercialization of absolutely everything is now the basis of a world culture.
Well you can have it folks. I’ve had my fill of it. There is no better example of Reagan Republican sleaze and greed anywhere… so get out there, MOMA, and drill into the deep pockets of all those globe trotting wealthy tourists …drill, baby, drill.
Absolutely nothing could ever induce me to step into this place again. Fine art venue? I don’t think so.
http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/966
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