Figures At The Seashore - 1931

The art world, like I suppose most others, desires order and definition and often goes in frantic search for it when perhaps little of the levels required for that order exist. The Picasso Masterpieces exhibition at the AGNSW is a case in point where such an approach actually fails, notwithstanding the efforts made in the accompanying catalogue to do so.

In essence the nature of the collection from which this 250 piece exhibition arises necessitates that this be so. In his lifetime Picasso preferred to keep as much of his work together (he painted over 3000 works alone) and to himself as he could. After he died and his family members were effectively forced to disgorge the collection to the State to meet inheritance taxes (the merits of such an eventuality are worthy of a rigorous debate right there) the art world found it had to rewrite their theories of his work. Admirers of his work in this country may well find this exhibition is a moment for them to also indulge in some reassessment of the common beliefs of Picasso’s work that they too may have held and /or had foisted upon them.

A core fascination and reward from Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musee National Picasso, Paris is the story line of Picasso’s life the exhibition represents. The strength of this experience is then buttressed by the quote from Picasso, Anne Baldassari, Curator of the exhibition and Chair of Musee National Picasso, recites at the opening of her catalogue essay ‘I paint the way some people write their autobiography. The paintings, finished or not, are the pages from my diary.’

For that is what we get presented in this exhibition, laid out essentially chronologically. And like any life, the diary entries, in this case the paintings, photos and sculptures, show Picassos’ is the product of his self, his experiences as a person and artist and as a result of the events around him, fully noting that in all dimensions there is no going back.

In essence, the previous words of experts to categorise years of endeavour as this or that (blue, cubist, figurative etc) period get shown up as shallow and merely convenient for that art world mentioned before to create.

Sure, the style of his so called blue period did not much recur but the building blocks upon which cubism was based remained throughout his career. Indeed, Picasso’s Masterpieces highlights how many styles he produced and how many were always close at hand for him to use to describe his world daily.

Picasso, of course, was also a prolific artist in perhaps the most volatile years mankind has yet produced. The impact on his subject matter from events such as both world wars and the changing appraisal of the supremacy of the machine are a fascination in and of themselves. Cat Catching A Bird (1939) and Massacre in Korea (1951) being two strong anti war images presented in the exhibition.

Celestinia (The Woman with a Cataract) - 1904

However, one of the questions that arise and may not be answered from this survey of his lifetime of work (he started painting at his father’s encouragement from a young age and sustained the effort til he died aged 91) is his view of women. Though he was richly endowed with the requisite equipment and hormonal passion, few of the women in his life were painted in a form that may be regarded as classically beautiful or formed. The one that comes closest is La Celestine, done in his blue style in 1904 but there the woman posing has an eye obliterated by a cataract.

So many, instead, look crafted from the same visual mould as those Picasso used in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Some have the most phallic of noses and in images depicting kissing (The Kiss – 1969 being but one example) the male and the female look almost identical. Were these depictions the new black or did all this speak of other aspects of his life and psyche?

No doubt psychologists can convene conventions around such issues or perspectives of Picasso’s life but the Masterpieces collection, while possessing few of the great man’s most famous works, does offer the more casual viewer a unique opportunity to see Picasso’s work across a lifetime and not in a ‘made of television’ style, with all its brilliances, excesses and passions on view to enrich our perceptions of one of the 20^th century’s greatest people.