So FINALLY this HOORAY! Picasso had an enormous output of sculpture in a very wide stylistic range over many decades- but never recall a sculpture show devoted to it. It's always mostly paintings with a few sculptures dropped in - wherever around town. So for me this is a finally overdue & a master stroke — the only one thing I can recall MoMA doing right in over decade. The upper right image in the MoMA Handout sheet, Picasso’s Woman with Vase is from the Guggenheim Black & White show in the Rotunda 2 years ago. Here’s my live drawing done then with the curator.
Bill Rabinovitch "Curator Carmen Giménez Celebrates Picasso's Woman with Vase" 01-22-13
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10200411157458396&set=a.1764...
Bill Rabinovitch "Curator Carmen Giménez Celebrates Picasso's Woman with Vase" 01-22-13
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10200411157458396&set=a.1764...
My ex inlaws passed away,But i was asked over to see if i wanted a couple of things from the house,I ran upon a Picasso Painting,also framed,Called The Lovers,Its an old print with signiture #23 and a few words of info on the back stating washington D C,Chesterdale collection.
Some years ago I saw a stupendous exhibition of Picasso's sculpture in Paris. Probably at the Pompidou. It might be the most awesome art exhibit I've ever seen, and I have to say I prefer some other painters to M. Picasso. But in the sculpture dept, Pablo rules. I promised myself I'd never go back to MOMA after the catastrophic redesign but this might be the exception to that rule.
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Was Picasso a better painter than sculptor? Oh, please, what a ridiculously sophomoric question to even pose. Picasso's art comes from a deep and broad creative wellspring that gave him the extraordinary ability to apply it to many mediums, be it two dimensional or three. That is why his creative works are so extraordinary; they come from an artist who is an original work unto himself. It's tantamount to asking if Elan Musk is a better tech businessman or automobile businessman. They are both blessed with that exceptional, rare combination of both gift and skill of execution in their respective (but not wholly different on a certain level) fields.
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Nice to see Roberta Smith back on her game. Thought she was ceding the field to Holland Cotter for a while. This is an excellent review and why I still ready (and buy) the NYT.
So I have until February 7 to get myself to NY and see this show? I can do that!
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Being able to see this show without crowds in yesterday's preview was worth alone the membership!All else is written here - more eloquently than I could say it.
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Thank you Roberta for sharing your thoughts on this truly once-in-a-lifetime exhibition. I can't help but shake my head, though, at the elitism and snobbishness of your concluding remarks.
We "genuine art lovers" should appreciate the fact that "art tourists wielding smartphones" are interested in visiting museums at all, and are in fact doing their part to help build awareness around art, especially modern/contemporary art. Not everyone will always take the art historian's approach of spending many hours with a single work, and that's okay.
We "genuine art lovers" should appreciate the fact that "art tourists wielding smartphones" are interested in visiting museums at all, and are in fact doing their part to help build awareness around art, especially modern/contemporary art. Not everyone will always take the art historian's approach of spending many hours with a single work, and that's okay.
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It's hard to be pleased with Picasso's art given that the man was such a monster to his children and family.
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I'm pleased with Picasso's work, not with his person. Being an artist myself I know they're two different things. But you're right, that biographic baggage is always going to be carried by his work and remains there for us - as real as the art objects themselves. He and his modernist contemporaries would not approve of us doing so and would deny any relevance - but they're dead now, and we're still connecting the dots without them or their approval. Good for you to mention it.
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Now that's truly an epically asinine thing to say. It's "hard to be pleased" with the work of one of the greatest artists in human history because he was not a nice man? How about we make sure that any work of art that is done by a non-nice man or woman gets put in storage? How about we just put the work in a basement because he was not up to saintly standards? Asinine, politically correct statement. And by the way, true monsters (say, Pol Pot or Papa Doc Duvalier, or any serial killer now in supermax) just had their brand devalued.
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If everyone is only pleased by artists, including e.g. composers, who were of superior morality in their behaviour toward both their family and others, museums and concert halls around the world would be empty.
Many a man and women of greatness might not have your superb morale, but then they left us a great inheritance to be admired for centuries to come.
Many a man and women of greatness might not have your superb morale, but then they left us a great inheritance to be admired for centuries to come.
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Enjoyed seeing this yesterday AM and I am not a big fan of Pablo. It's lots of fun with clever surprises!
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I saw this show last night in a preview, and it is quite amazing. For genius work that spans over 60 years, I found Picasso's sculpture to be extremely accessible. He seems to always be doing his own things, with his own ideas, and what he borrows he completely transforms into Picasso - meaning that you don't have to know much about advances in sculpture, historical politics or what artists he may be reacting to in order to appreciate this exhibition fully.
I am going to miss the fourth floor though while it's gone. I love de Kooning's Woman 1, the Pollocks, Gorky, the minimalists . . . I guess they'll be back one day.
I am going to miss the fourth floor though while it's gone. I love de Kooning's Woman 1, the Pollocks, Gorky, the minimalists . . . I guess they'll be back one day.
No surprises here. Picasso in three dimensions is just as uninteresting, uninspired, passionless and mercenary as Picasso in two dimensions.
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What is really the most uninteresting and uninspired in the whole universe are really one-dimensional brains.....
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"If the Modern’s curators can reinstall fewer works after the close of this show, visitors might stand a better chance of becoming genuine art lovers rather than art tourists wielding smartphones."
Not likely. Lights could be focused on one artwork standing alone in a vast gallery, and the "art tourists" would still be there with their smartphones, too absorbed with chronicling their visit to simply stand there and grasp the artistry.
Not likely. Lights could be focused on one artwork standing alone in a vast gallery, and the "art tourists" would still be there with their smartphones, too absorbed with chronicling their visit to simply stand there and grasp the artistry.
3
Not all art lovers live in NYC. Some of us live in the hinterlands of Ohio, for example, and the opportunity to see (and even take home pictures to enjoy over and over) is not an everyday possibility.
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Like most Picasso products, except early stuff and "Guernica," it's really, really UGLY. Blech.
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That's a good reaction. Honest. Passionate. And it's all yours.
Once seen, never forgotten. A family of forms and ideas to astound, causing wonder and question.
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one overriding point lacking in the review: what becomes clear from the exhibit is just how much fun Picasso was having. you can practically touch the joy and playfulness he brought to his work, serious as it may be. this exhibit, if nothing else, humanizes the artist as a fun-loving person.
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Though I've never really connected to Picasso on an aesthetic level, I've always been able to recognize his importance in the evolution of modern art. There was always a desire to make everything he saw his own through an artistic mediation of it, whether it be a person, thing, or event. This is a man who took it all in and let it all out. Unfortunately, he's suffered a fate similar to that of Elvis and Marilyn Monroe: the celebrity sometimes overshadows the talent. I think a lot of people look at Picasso as "Picasso" and not as art. They don't understand the radical agenda of cubism, for example. Hopefully, exhibits like this one, if they reach a large enough audience (not just composed of people already versed in art history), will get people to see Picasso as the innovator he was and not just as the auction darling he's become.
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Picasso is having the most fun by pulling the wool over your eyes, Gotcha.
"The future of sculpture lay with Braque’s innovation, Cubist collage." Roberta Smith...so why not write about pieces like "Woman in the Garden" or "Head of a Woman" ? thats the work that fulfills that vision and seen as the most important , lead to everything from drawing in space ,sculpture as engineering to current assemblage, unless we are still hung up on the old anti -formalist thinking? OTHER wise a great show and review but I knew it would be ....Peter Reginato
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Picasso's truly endless creativity can leave one amazed, and a bit envious too.
I cannot stop looking at Woman With Hat. It is as if he folded space itself.
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Thanks to Roberta Smith's superbly written review, I can't wait to see this show, (even if it is in that dreadful building).
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Enjoy the sculpture garden first. They've beefed it up and I think it improves the overall experience of the museum.
Can't wait! See you Monday
2
The best Picasso exhibit I ever saw was one which consisted of the many studies Picasso did as he planned his "Las Meninas" painting. I am as much interested in the process that leads to the final product as I am in the final product.
Likewise, I once saw a Camille Claudel exhibit which consisted of her most famous finished pieces...along with the studies she had done in various materials: Clay, Wax, Plaster, etc. leading to the final bronzes.
And even though I generally don't like Norman Mailer's writing, I loved his "Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man." Mailer and Picasso were cosmically made for each other.
Likewise, I once saw a Camille Claudel exhibit which consisted of her most famous finished pieces...along with the studies she had done in various materials: Clay, Wax, Plaster, etc. leading to the final bronzes.
And even though I generally don't like Norman Mailer's writing, I loved his "Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man." Mailer and Picasso were cosmically made for each other.
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Nope. Picasso is amazing, collosal, Mailer not so much, if at all.
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but so very much is not worthy...
the pendelum eventually swings.
he was, in private, quite the bad vibe guy..