#musee picasso

[artdecoandmodernist]

Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Lee Miller as L’Arlésienne. 1937.

Musée Picasso, Paris.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Screechingblizzardbanana asked: Have you seen the Paul Smith-designed Picasso Celebrations at the Musee National? Understand there is controversy swirling around it. Is this because it's Smith or Picasso or how it is been done? Being my French and cultural lode star I would appreciate your take.

I have been to the recently opened Paul Smith curated exhibition on Picasso at the Musée national Picasso-Paris people just call it the Musée Picasso) in the heart of the Marais. I was strong armed into going by my formidable French neighbour downstairs with whom I’ve become good friends with since going through the Covid lock down together in our apartment building. She is a highly respected art gallery owner and is a fan of Picasso. She had been to the star studded champagne opening of the exhibition but now she wanted a second look through the eyes of a plebeian (yours truly).  I shall straight out say that I thoroughly enjoyed myself and I greatly liked the exhibition to ‘celebrate’ - or should I say mark - the 50th anniversary of Pablo Picasso’s death in 1973.

At 76 years old, Sir Paul Smith is a national treasure as one of Britain’s leading fashion designers. For him as an Englishman to be asked by the French to come over the Channel and curate an exhibition, to mark an important anniversary of one of the greatest and iconic artists of the 20th century, is testament to how highly regarded he is as an artistic designer in his own right across the channel.  Apparently this exhibition has been at least three years in the making. Paul Smith was surprised when he got a call from the then curator of the Musée Picasso, the dynamic Laurent le Bon, who invited Smith to curate an exhibition out of sample from over 200,000 works by Picasso held by the museum and put his own spin on it.

Smith was initially reluctant as he wasn’t from the art world but the fashion and design world. It’s precisely because he wasn’t from the art world that le Bon wanted him to curate an exhibition as his aim was to celebrate Picasso's work in a different way, and not in a predictive way and one that would appeal to a newer and younger audience.

Moreover le Bon assured him he would have complete carte blanche over the exhibition. Smith was won over and then Covid hit. Through the subsequent lockdown, Smith’s time was spent fully immersed in Picasso, trawling through 200,000 works, making choices that were spontaneous and intuitive. Le Bon would move on to fresh pastures but the new director, Cécile Debray, picked up the baton from le Bon and enthusiastically got behind Smith.

The challenge for Smith was daunting. Picasso was particularly prolific and his work can be seen all over the world. He had to show Picasso in more interesting way that perhaps hadn’t been done before. The most difficult thing was not to drown out the subject matter with all the works available to the museum and the artist's family. Smith didn't really know where to start, between cubism, the blue period and the ceramics from Vallauris but Cécile Debray shepherded him through that creative process.

The result, to my mind at least, is a spectacular rearrangement of Picasso museum’s permanent collection, combining the museum’s masterpieces with works by modern and contemporary artists. In a broadly chronological tour of Picasso’s artistic journey covering the whole of Picasso's creation and the most emblematic subjects of the artist's work, Smith has imagined a joyful dialogue between the masterpieces conserved in the museum and more contemporary works that invite us to take a new look at the collection while underlining the ever-present character of Picasso's work. The exhibition is punctuated by works by international contemporary artists such as Guillermo Kuitca, Obi Okigbo, Mickalene Thomas and Chéri Samba, all of whom contribute to the same desire to open up new perspectives on the posterity of Picasso's work, by questioning his image or by taking up some of his plastic innovations.

From the onset, Smith makes it clear that this is not your standard show. A wall studded with bicycle seats nods to Smith as the master of ceremonies - Smith has always been a keen cyclist and nearly became a professional cyclist in his youth. But the wall opposite, bare but for Picasso’s Tete de Taureau (a bull’s head made from a bike saddle and handlebars), establishes the Spaniard as the artist visitors are here to see.

From there on, it’s a helter skelter ride through Picasso’s life: pages of Vogue covered with his subversive scribbles; explorations into Cubism hung on walls lined with brown Kraft paper; the sketches for the Demoiselles d’Avignon against a throbbing pink. Collages are hung among a panoply of hectic wallpapers acquired en masse from a failed factory in Pennsylvania. Among them is the Nature morte à la chaise cannée from 1912, considered to be the first fine art collage ever made and shows he was a master of invention that you feel that Picasso wasn’t afraid to try whatever was on his mind.

Brought on by the death of his friend Carlos Casagemas in 1901, Picasso’s Blue period reduced the artist’s palette to the one colour for a year. This time in the artist’s career is shown in a deep blue room, the lugubriousness of the Woman with the Cloudy Eye (surely one of the greatest portraits ever) heightened by the azure monotone of the space. Bullfighting sketches are enveloped in blood-red gloss, while the iconic paintings of his “Seated Women” series, including lover Marie-Therese and her successor Dora Maar, are shown amid roughly painted stripes.

This interplay of wall and work pulls Picasso’s stylistic use of stripes into focus, reinforcing the portraiture’s fragmentary psychological complexity. The loose late figurative works - mostly derided at the time of his death - now look contemporarily relevant, as a driving force for Basquiat and Baselitz.

Of course, these days Picasso can’t be taken on without critique: his misogyny; his careless attitude to Africa and its artefacts. It says more about current English ‘woke’ sensibilities with race and social justice than French ones that Smith and (from what my art gallery friend tells me) Debray, a little hesitantly, insert contemporary works among Smith’s selections. Two Louise Bourgeois pieces speak of the travails of womanhood. A new collage by the Congolese artist Cheri Samba shows the artist at a cozy kitchen table with a map of Africa and a mask hovering over the canvas. A dazzling 2016 trompe l’oeil by the Argentinian Guillermo Kuitca, of a road disappearing into a hectic Cubist landscape, reflects the enduring influence of Picasso’s 70-year career.

Overall though it’s joyous and vibrant in colour. Above all it’s a whimsical vitamin-packed exhibition that establishes the Spanish painter as a true master of colour by contrasting his greatest masterpieces with the shimmering, polychrome creations of Mickalene Thomas or Chéri Samba. Paul Smith has imagined a possible communion between the different movements, making audacious connections and a resolutely inventive layout of the works that opens up new perspectives on the posterity of Picasso's name in the modern world.

As for the critical reception, it has on the whole been very positive. There really hasn’t been the controversial outcry that you might think would happen when an outsider - no less than an Englishman and not even an artist - is asked to curate an artist close to the French artistic soul. Critics have been largely pleased that Smith’s colourful exhibition has shown Picasso in a fresh new way. Many have been won over by Smith undoubtedly keen eye for patterns, best displayed in one room where he has assembled works that use the principle of the stripe, which he has also placed, tone on tone, on multicoloured wallpaper.

Of course there others who are less charitable and continue to grumble in their wine glasses. Some have decried his lack of academic expertise in Picasso. But the fact that Smith said that he wasn’t an academic from the very beginning was already built into expectations.

And I think personally Paul Smith is doing himself a great disservice. If you’ve met Paul Smith you would know Smith is characteristically modest and self-deprecating in a way that Englishmen are raised to be (or were anyway).

To my mind, Smith plays down his own pure artistic credentials. Back in 1970 Smith started with a 3 square metre design wear shop that was open two days a week. In the following year, in the basement, he set up a small gallery, where he exhibited David Hockney, Andy Warhol and photographs by the iconic David Bailey, whom he was friends with. The success of that led him to have many exhibitions in both London and Japan - two of the coolest cultural places in the 1970s. Moreover these days he has art works by British painters including William Coldstream and Euan Uglow in is home and a wife, trained at the Slate school of Art, to help buy and curate art.

One direct criticism I heard was from a well credentialised French art critic whom my art gallery owning friend had over for tea - and I was also there. He was quite sniffy about the Picasso exhibition curated by Paul Smith. He dismissed Smith as lacking imagination and even being disrespectful to Picasso. He was referring to Smith bringing together Picasso's paintings from the 1950s and making a wallpaper out of them with the number 50 on it. But more glaringly he was perplexed that there was in one room that was devoted to the painter's famous sailor T-shirts, with paintings, photos, drawings and a mass of T-shirts hanging from the ceiling, hanging like a peasant’s washing line.

I almost choked on my tea as I couldn’t but help but suppress a giggle. To me it was obvious that Smith was being reverential by having Picasso’s sailor T-shirts displayed on a washing line as nod to his own tongue in cheek English humour. It was playful, not malicious. I think English humour was lost on him because I tried to educate him but clearly he just didn’t get it, or more likely, too pompous to admit he didn’t get the joke.

In all fairness - and for what it’s worth - I do have my own criticism, but a gentle one.

That is the wisdom of some more contemporary art pieces done by other artist to sit in contrast to Picasso’s pieces was questionable. I’m not questioning the merit of the piece in itself but in comparison to Picasso’s pieces. For example, next to a painting by Paul Cézanne from Aix, a pillar of art history and the jewel in Picasso's collection, one of the artists also invited, the Argentine Guillermo Kuitca had created a rather unconvincing puppet house that takes up the motifs of Mont Sainte-Victoire. It just didn’t fit. It is dangerous to measure yourself too closely against such a genius of art history that Picasso undoubtedly was.

I would say Paul Smith’s curated Picasso exhibition is a definitely worth seeing if one is in Paris. What outsiders don’t understand is how bringing in an outsider with his own unique and keen eye on colour and design as Paul Smith has, he could be saving the Musée Picasso from decline.

The truth is the Picasso museum used to be very popular with tourists as well as Parisians. Until recently, endless queues stretched out on rue de Thorigny in front of the entrance to the prestigious institution, the hôtel Salé. Alas this is no longer the case. Of course Covid can take some of the blame for until 2019, 60% of the museum’s visitors were tourists. However international tourists have returned and neither have Parisians.

I think one reason that those in the art world are now beginning to fret about is public disaffection. There have been a fair number of articles leading up to his anniversary that was keen to highlight Picasso’s sins: he is the incarnation of toxic masculinity as well as white privilege, an absolute misogynist, a pervert, a tormentor of Dora Maar and Françoise Gilot, a rapist, a paedophile, a racist, a thief of African art…..and so on and so on. This is part of the opening salvo in the new war with the woke that is only now entering the French cultural discourse. So far the barbarians have been stopped at the gates because the French just see anything woke as an unwelcome American import.

But I think the real reason is the Picasso museum is a victim of its own success. In short France is saturated in all things Picasso. Under Laurent le Bon’s dynamic leadership (the last Picasso museum director/curator) he created a network, ‘Picasso-Méditerranée’, with 78 institutions which, from 2017 to 2019, hosted a travelling programme on Picasso in France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Israel, Türkiye, and Morocco. That’s two intense years of what critics called ‘Picasso-mania’, with exhibitions of ‘Matisse-Picasso’ (in Nice), ‘Godard-Picasso’ (in Arles), ‘Picasso and the Ancient World’ (in Naples), ‘Picasso and the Performing Arts’ (in Izmir).

Moreover the Picasso museum was once seen as quite sniffy and stingy with its hoard of Picasso artefacts. But under le Bon’s direction that changed when the museum lent to anyone who asked, especially to regional institutions.

So on paper the idea was fantastic. But some critics say it’s been taken too far with curators thematising Picasso to the point of vertigo. In the last two years, we’ve had ‘Picasso under the Occupation’ at the Grenoble Museum, ‘Picasso the Illustrator’ at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Tourcoing, ‘Picasso's Music’ at the Philharmonie, ‘Picasso, Baigneuses et Baigneurs’ at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, ‘Picasso the Foreigner’ at the Musée National de l'Histoire de l'Immigration, ‘Pablo Picasso's Louvre’ at the Louvre-Lens. And this doesn’t even include exhibitions at the Picasso museum itself such as ‘Picasso-Rodin’, ‘Picasso and the comic strip’, ‘Picasso in the image’, and ‘Picasso the poet’.

Indeed some now say Picasso-mania is drowning France in Picasso to the point where the inevitable question is asked: is Picasso out of vogue?

This would explain the decline of the Hôtel Salé, which has housed the world's largest Picasso collection since 1985. It’s not just artists like Picasso who have a blue period, museum curators do too. Cécile Debray has gone on record to say, “It's very difficult to supervise empty rooms”.

But just like artists like Picasso can’t be reduced to one colour or defined by their sins (as judged by the puritan police), so I don’t think you can keep a great artist down for long.

Picasso had a fertile mind that fed his creativity in so many ways than any other modern artist. He was modern, spontaneous and drew on paper napkins or newspapers. He was interested in everything around him and he was into everything from colours, objects and art forms. His creativity was rich because he was open minded. Picasso said that he spent his life painting like a child because a child is free.

Anyone who is engages with his art comes away with an invitation to have their soul filled with child-like wonder. That’s why I hope Paul Smith’s Picasso exhibition attracts a new and younger audience so that they can discover the artist for the first time, but also I hope they treasure their child-like soul for wonder against cynicism or nihilism, which is the best our western society can offer them because it is sick with impoverished souls. 

Thanks for your question.

[peoplematchingartworks]

[fiercerthanyou]

"Weeping Women are Angry"  by ORLAN

Courtesy: Ceysson & Bénétière / https://www.museepicassoparis.fr/en/orlan-weeping-women-are-angry

[rosalovesdc]

Paris Part 1...

Saint-Germain-des-Prés {Photo 1}

Arc de Triomphe {Photo 2}

Palais Royal {Photo 3}

Le Louvre {Photos 4 and 7}

Musée Picasso {Photos 5 and 6}

Eglise Saint-Roch {Photo 8}

Musée Rodin {Photo 9}

Le Marais {Photo 10}

[pazzesco]

“Dora Maar in Armchair” painted by Picasso in 1939.

Marina Elphick's "Dora Maar Muse"

Marina Elphick's "Dora Maar Muse" - Marina’s muse Dora is set in “Dora Maar in Armchair”

Dora Muse with Le baiser by Picasso.

“Painter and his model in a Landscape,” 1953 by Picasso, with Dora Maar muse facing outward.

Dora and ‘The Muse’, 1935 by Picasso. Dora Maar was a talented photographer and artist herself.

Dora muse, The artist with his model by Picasso, 1963.

Detail of Dora Maar muse in ” Maisonette dans un jardin” by Picasso 1908. Dora Maar was a renowned Surrealist photographer and artist herself.

Marina Elphick - Marina Made Me - Marina's Muses

Self portrait as Ophelia, detail, batik on Cotton by Marina Elphick.

[9w1ft]

hi! you know, at first i thought i might not answer this but as a matter of fact sometimes around here we talk about the concept of the muse so if you happen to be new, stick around and maybe some of that will come around again in how i write or how some of us write

it’s hard to pull up old posts but maybe searching my blog for the word muse might bring something up but anyway if you think about the concept of the artist and muse and the fact that with midnights, with the anti hero video, that she placed a book about picasso on the table, i get the sense that there was a turning point in the way that she viewed karlie as a model and as a muse or she was able to wake up to the fact that she was taking away some agency from karlie and shaping her or painting her worse and worse over time.. and i think she’s worked to correct that in recent years over the course of several songs which i consider to be from karlie’s perspective, the first song it stood out to me was renegade, but i see some of it on folkevermore, midnights.. like just the notion that taylor put the picasso comparison out there is very striking to me. i think she gets it now.

it’s almost as if one day she ran into this image and went, oh,

[pagansphinx]

Pablo Picasso (Spanish, ) • Woman in a Red Armchair • 1931 • MoMA, New York City

Photo: Pagan Sphinx Photography

In my opinion the style of this painting is both surrealism and cubism. There are paintings from this period that blur the distinction and I believe this one of them.

More importantly (to me anyway) are the symbols that identify, and history show, this portrait as that of Marie-Thérèse Walter, Picasso's young mistress. She was just seventeen when their affair commenced. Picasso painted this on Christmas day in 1931, when he was still married to and living with Olga Khokhlova. The smudged brushstrokes could possibly be a reflection of the tension Picasso was feeling between his marriage and his affair. The heart protruding from the neck signifies that Marie-thérèse is the woman he loves. The heart is a rare sentimental flourish in Picasso's oeuvre.

Right: Picasso; Left: Marie-Thérèse Walter • c. 1930

Four years later, Picasso and Olga separated. At that time the affair with Marie-Thérèse also ended. Despite having a daughter, Maya, together, Picasso left her for the artist Dora Maur. As was the case with Picasso, his interest in women waned and he moved on to his next conquest. In 1977, after Picasso's death, Marie-Thérèse killed herself.

Pablo Picasso and Olga Khoklova in Rome • 1917

References:

• Museum of Modern Art: Gallery Card

• arthive.com

• Lewis Art Café

[les-portes-du-sud]

« Moi je sors exalté de cette expérience presque : je savais que j’avais raison quand, adolescent dans mon village, j’ai conclu que l’érotisme est la religion la plus ancienne, que mon corps est mon unique mosquée et que l’art est la seule éternité dont je peux être certain »

Kamel Daoud

[movietonight]

M*A*S*H // Guernica - Picasso (detail)

[ducknotinarow]

“What kind of Koopa are you? I don’t think I’ve seen you before.” With a tilt of his head, Jr. watches Chompy curiously. “Are you lost?” ( finally offers a friend :’3 )

| Muse interaction

Chompy, knew he wasn't meant to travel in the sewers by himself. That he should at least go with his dads first. One of his uncles second even. Heck even along with Savage at least! The basic rule was Chompy no matter what should ever go into the sewers alone by himself. Never knew what he might run into, least that what he was always told by his Dad's. But his Dad's were also just so very over protective of him and sometimes that could be annoying. He was a tough little turtle himself. Chompy didn't need his hand to be held so he ventured off by himself! So he was going to prove that even. Waiting for the best time where no one was watching him he very carefully made his way out from the lair. Chompy new some of the tunnels from travels before, he would just go up to the nears manhole cover and grab something to prove he made it there and home with out a snag. Course it was a bit different walking by himself compared to being with Papa Raph. Who either carried him or held his hand. Was it left or right they normally went? Then again Chompy wasn't all to sure which was left and which was right either.

That issue continued as he just took a random guess and figured if he end a dead end he Could turn around.

And you know what happened? That's right! Everything went south very fast. Chompy soon found himself lost. He knew parts of tunnels from traveling but he often followed someone else and didn't fully pay attention so it was easy to get turned around and lost. Like Chompy was till coming across one large green pipe. Now finding himself? Well he was still trying to figure that part out? What were you meant to do when lost? OH! Easy keep on moving forward.

Through maybe that thought was wrong Chompy started to rethink as he just found himself more and more confused only growing less and less unsure of this whole idea as time went on. Plopping down on the the ground tail curling around himself as he drew his knees towards his plastron. Tucking his face away as he tried to squeeze his eyes tight to avoid the tears building up to fall.

"I shoulda neva left home" he slight admits finally when the sound of another voice near set him jumping right out of his shell.

“What kind of Koopa are you? I don’t think I’ve seen you before.”

Chompy blinks but keeps his eyes focused on to the turtle before him? Least they sorta look like a mutant turtle to Chompy. Hmm but he said koopa? Whats a koopa? Is it like a turtle? They had spikes on the back of their shell similar to himself and his brother even. But he hadn't spoked a word just slight shrunk away from this maybe turtle? Koopa thing? Hmm guess Koopa was right for them. Tail curling in tighter around himself as he looks away from them. Wishing even more his papa Raph was here with him.

"Imma turtle not a koopa," Chompy managed to mumble out as he kept his attention on the dirt.

“Are you lost?”

Chompy slowly nods his head and sniffles a bit as he moves to rub at his eyes. Last thing he needed to throw in was crying around some random kid he just met. Oh wait, that hadn't clued in on him just yet this is just another kid right? Slightly lifting his gaze to the other kid. "Y-yeah." maybe this kid could tell him how to get back home? "I was exploring and found a big green tube that brought me here." Chompy finally speaks up. "But..I dunno where here is? or how to go back. My Dad's gonna be so mad though." Which Chompy wasn't sure what part was worse about all of this. Being lost or making them mad possibly. Chompy slowly uncurled his tail and moved to stand up. Had to be like his dad's and be brave! As he moved to stand up now. "I'm Chompy," he offers his name, there should be any worry talking to them since they weren't human either after all. "Uh coulda ya tell me where i am maybe that help me get back?" he hopes at least. But hey some luck on his side that he came across another little turtle like himself right?

[carobnewyork]

[elpublico]

YAY!!! my school is offering a paris program im so excited!!!

[bentpages]

Musée National Picasso - elisabarg

[vagabondageautourdesoi]

Museo Picasso - Malaga

La ville natale de Picasso a ouvert en 2003 son propre musée. La collection présentée appartenait au fils de l’artiste, Paolo, gérée actuellement par sa veuve. Palacio de Buenavista L’extérieur avec sa rue piètonne Ce musée est implanté dans un palais à l’architecture andalouse du XVIe siècle, avec un mélange typique d’éléments Renaissance et Mudéjar. Complètement dans la vieille ville qui est…