Among the more mundane lessons one learns in art school is the instruction to sign a work which signifies that for the artist it is finished. Among the more mundane indicators of Picasso’s classical training is his signature writ large on the margins of his works. While looking at this exhibition the absence of that familiar flourish became very obvious to me: many, in fact most, of these works were not signed. In the John Richardson biography he states that early in his Paris years Picasso discovered that there were ready buyers for even his most preliminary sketches and so they were all made with an arrangement that suggested a finished work and all of them were signed and dated if not perhaps upon completion then at the time of sale or sometime soon after that. As most of the works in this exhibition appear to be “finished” it made me curious to know if they might have been works that he had always intended to keep for future reference, and later owned by or sold by his family from that private collection after this death.
A great many of them in fact are designated as being from private collections and so one might deduce that we are being shown uncirculated works. And as the interpretations and the notes in the catalogue tell us, many are Picasso’s working drawings and we are being allowed a more insider view into his working method than is usually the case.
Many exhibitions ago I became aware that a Picasso painting is really a drawing in oil on canvas. Of the plastic elements, color, line, and form, line is always dominant, form is his second interest and color is often not a consideration at all …apparently whatever was at hand would do. (Yet when he wanted to be a colorist he could be.) That elicits no complaint on my part: I love looking at drawings and he is the master draftsman of the twentieth century …few could draw better than he did, few loved to draw as much as he did, and no one else made anywhere near as many art works. Apparently he never tired of making them. Yet this is not to say that he was in the thrall of a compulsion …he was no sorcerer’s apprentice: sorcerer yes, apprentice no..
Most of these drawings are on canvas, (only seven are on paper, in contrast to what the exhibition title might suggest), a beautiful linen fabric perfectly stretched and primed and giving them, in the unpainted areas, a look of real elegance. I have seen Picasso drawings on paper on very large sheets, probably as large as these canvases so why he chose canvas rather than paper I do not know nor does the catalogue tell us. I have seen this technique, unpainted ground, before, notably in the Last Works at the Gagosian Gallery a few years ago, and I like it …an elegant piece of linen beautifully prepared is as handsome as the finest hand made paper. Most of them are made with paint and brush but others are in charcoal or pencil. Left unpainted the visible linen ground suggests watercolor with its areas of unpainted paper, but it also references the many unfinished late works of Cezanne. In its effect it gives the impression of an open and breathing space rather than the hard wall of a completely covered and varnished surface. I think we might conclude that in the poetry of modern art exposed canvas is a welcome conceit.
The catalogue states that Picasso used black and white throughout his career and to illustrate that point we are shown paintings/drawings that represent his entire 70 year career. Of course the most well known of his black and white paintings, if not of all his paintings, is Guernica and there are several works which illustrate the development of his design for that painting. But those fall within the chronological order in which the exhibition is arranged and while it is wonderful to have examples of the broad range of styles associated with him, there is a sense, ultimately, that all of this leads up to nothing; the exhibition lacks a narrative: one slowly makes his way up to the sixth level of the spiraling ramp, comes to the end, and then slowly makes his way back down to the street. The audio guide is easy to use but the information it contains is almost all personal recollection by family members and friends. In the catalogue reproductions there is no commentary on the individual works. As to what use specifically he made of these black and white works we are not told. Of course if we are familiar with his work we do not need to be told…but not being told we are uncertain if we are drawing the same conclusions as the curators had hoped we would.
One of the remarkable aspects of Picasso’s work and working method was his ability to step up to an empty space, make a line, study it, and then conceptualize a drawing/painting and turn it quickly into a finished work. That implies that concept, execution, and critique were simultaneous impulses in his mind. This process can be seen in the 1956 Clouzot film which is shown at the museum during the run of this exhibition. (It is also available from Netflix.) While some viewers have commented that he is too facile for his own good, what they fail to realize is that in this process Picasso could imbue each work with a strong statement of his sentiments regarding the subject at hand. That ability to add the emotional content is what Suzanne Langer defines as that which elevates the mastery of craft to the level of fine art. In this exhibition there are very few works that lack emotional content. Where it is lacking we can understand that he was simply exploring the formal values. And this is what sets him apart from other artists: the modern art world is full of practitioners who concerned themselves with formal values but I think it should be understood that that in and of itself in insufficient to creating a work of fine art.
I sometimes think that those who do not like Picasso and who consider him facile consider only the volume of his work and consider that great number an indication of superficiality. I see his work as visual poetry, and no matter how many of his works I see, they are equally as valid human expression as poems of but a few stanzas.
For the past several years I have been trying to decipher analytic cubism and one of the delightful surprises in this exhibition was the opportunity to give further study to the development of the concept of cubism in the sequence of works catalogue numbers 3 through 16 which are examples from the earliest geometricized figures to synthetic cubism featuring a work with pasted papers. This was especially of interest in works 12 and 13 in both of which the nude female forms are very distinctly presented and with geometric divisions in the surrounding areas. Afterward it was very easy to sit with a pencil and paper and isolate the figure within the composition and identify the various views selected by the artist. I am not always certain what those surrounding divisions indicate in analytic cubism and from these two works I think it can be assumed that they are an arbitrary division of the picture surface. They might possibly refer to the environment in which the model posed but as this became a standard compositional development in analytic cubism I think the arbitrary division is the better explanation. One constant I have observed is that in the cubist paintings (i.e. number 14.) the whole of the surface is covered with paint whereas in the cubist drawings (i.e. number 15.) the figure is generally isolated in the center of an otherwise unworked sheet.
As always the drawings of Marie Therese are lovely and lovingly made. I will never tire of looking at these. It has been reported that Picasso’s first spoken word was piz …lapiz… (pencil) …and from his first to his last works there is always the thrill and wonder of the child who lived in what Freud described as the oceanic experience in awe of the line that is blazed by his marking device and nowhere more so than in his Marie Therese drawings where the great sweeping arc of the line turns and curves and fixes her forever on the ground. Drawing was his most loved medium and she was the most loved of his many muses.
Those who have read these notes in the past know that I am tone deaf when it comes to sculpture: I don’t know why anyone makes it nor do I know why anyone would want to look at it. The only exceptions are the work of Rodin and Picasso. And in this exhibition there are several works of interest…Woman with Outstretched Arms, 1961, which has the dynamic of a summer breeze, several studies of Sylvette, more later, and Head (Tete), 1928, a work which completely captivates me. As to why I might like these I would have to say because all three of them are painted…I almost always like a painted surface. As to why I might like Head I think I read it as a three dimensional drawing…in the catalogue it faces Musical Instruments on a Round Table, 1927, synthetic cubism, and comparing the two my response to Head can be understood immediately. But what was so astounding to me is that in the photographs Head appears to be of substantial size and weight whereas in the museum I almost passed it by: it is only six inches high!
And of interest to those of us who saw this exhibition in New York are the five or six works Picasso made from the model Sylvette in 1953, of interest to New Yorkers because of the very large (about 30 feet) Sylvette that stands in the yard of the residences of NYU just off Houston Street, south of Bleecker and east of West Broadway. It was interesting to me that nothing in the exhibition or the catalogue made reference to that work. But perhaps I am prejudiced: I once lived just down the street and when that was erected I was able to observe the ongoing process.
Of the works with a high degree of finish I have always been fascinated by The Kitchen which looks like the diagram for a construction of gas pipes and fittings, and the Milliner’s Shop in which Picasso’s flowing line has been subsumed by the filling in of the created shapes defined by the lines. There is a certain humor in the many shapes making reference to the work of the milliner in which the shapes of her materials are stitched together to create a whole, almost as if Picasso was admitting that while he loved drawing, he was aware that in nature there are no lines.
Toward the high end of the ramp the exhibition closes with the late works in which his need to hurry and get everything done manifested itself in a series of fluidly drawn compositions filled in with wet on wet liquid paint. And my perplexity at the near end on seeing Picasso’s take on Velasquez’ Las Meninas: I understand the painting’s point of view, I can decipher the composition, I can appreciate the rich color of it. What I don’t understand is why it is considered one of the truly great paintings of Western Art. This interpretation is very interesting, very faithful, and very respectful, but it too leaves me equally as mystified.
This is a lovely exhibition and I am always ready to see more of Picasso’s work, but I feel it is not one of the essential, must see Picasso exhibitions. While there are several really wonderful pieces that I was happy to experience first hand and several I could study closely, I really felt that overall this was merely just “more of the same”. I really dislike feeling that in regard to Picasso’s work …but sometimes it is inevitable there being so many to look upon. But, yes, perhaps it is the lack of a focused narrative.
Having said that: this exhibition sits beautifully in the Guggenheim Museum, in fact, it is one of the few exhibitions I have seen there …I cannot recall another off hand …in which the presence of the building is subsumed by the art works. This is saying something as I am a devotee of the work of Frank Lloyd Wright and this building is among my very favorites.
The catalogue is excellent and a welcome addition to my growing Picasso library…now filling thirty six inches of shelf space. Four essays discuss Picasso’s life long work in black and white, the symbolism of black and white, and the use of black and white in the western tradition. In addition to reproductions of other Picasso works not in this exhibition, there are many reproduced works by other artists that were influential in Picasso’s career. In particular I found the essay, Turn, by Richard Shiff very informative in its discussion of the development of cubism. There are valuable insights and references in this essay.
I took an early train into the city to see this exhibition and I arrived at the museum at about 10:30 A.M. I was surprised to find that there were no long lines at the door. In fact, I walked in and went directly to the ticket counter. As I climbed the ramp I estimated that there were probably not a full one hundred visitors in the building….but perhaps the size of the space distorts the count. I am always happy to see smaller crowds in museums. There were, however, about twelve to fifteen groups of school children of all ages and while I think they were being well behaved, they do break away from their groups and fall into a lot of idle chatter. Each group had a leader and each leader had much to say in a voice that might have been raised higher than it should have. On the main floor at the very center of the rotunda there was a woman with a very piercing voice whose job it was to welcome each new group as they came onto the center stage. During the whole of my visit there was never a time when her voice was not heard. In short: despite the few visitors there was tremendous hubbub in this place. I certainly approve of educating young people in the fine arts. But please, can’t this be done on days when I am not there?
In the upper left corner of this page there is a little black box. If you click on that it will open photographs of some of the works:
http://web.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/picasso/
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