Picasso at the National
Oliver Wapshott, Wednesday, 27th May 2009
One of the most popular exhibitions of this year’s calendar has been Picasso: Challenging the Past (currently at the National Gallery, London), a monumental exhibition that seeks to highlight Picasso’s response throughout his career to the great painters of the past, both in theme and style.
The way in which this idea is explored is one of the talking points that have surrounded this somewhat controversial exhibition. The same group of 60 Picasso paintings travelled to London from the Grand Palais in Paris, where they were displayed next to full-size reproductions of the paintings to which Picasso responded. In London, however, the curators chose to provide an accompanying booklet that showed the relevant works in the order in which they appeared through the rooms. While it remains unclear whether this was a space-saving device or a conscious stylistic decision, it does allow the visitor the freedom to choose whether or not they want the influences to be presented explicitly, or to merely wonder at the largest collection of Picassos in London for some years, without the academic constraints suggested by the show’s title. This ability to choose the way in which one consumes the art saves the exhibition from being overpowering and dictatorial in its delivery of its message, a choice the Paris audience did not have.
The paintings are divided into rooms by theme: self-portraits, women/muses, still life and the direct imitations. This division is a refreshing change to the usual tool of chronology, and one of its benefits is that it conveys very well the astounding range of styles that Picasso employed throughout his career. What comes across is an artist constantly using his imagination, trying new ideas and techniques, and drawing on the past as fodder for his artistic energy.
In fact, I found that the link to the past masters, which the exhibition tried so hard to play up, was often the least interesting part of the works. It often merely provided a distraction from the alternative brilliance that Picasso brings to the canvas. The interesting thing about ‘Man with a Straw Hat and an Ice Cream Cone’ is not that it may (or may not, as the case may be) have been influenced by Van Gogh’s penchant for straw hats. This detail is almost irrelevant, as is much possibly circumstantial biographical background information. More interesting are the things that fascinate in any piece of art: the composition, the colour, the representation and so on. The feeling I got was that far from ‘challenging the past’, Picasso was merely using the conveyer-belt of exceptional painters who preceded him to provide him with an almost unlimited supply of subject matter, more like borrowing from the past.
On the second floor of the main part of the gallery, strangely disjointed, sit a room of Picasso’s prints that also included as part of the exhibition. As Picasso was never a trained print-maker, his use of the medium is naively brilliant: instead of using a different piece of lino for each colour, he often used the same piece of lino and cut each colour into it in succession, taking prints in-between and thus allowing himself the narrowest scope for error. This small room quietly contradicts the thrust of the more loudly heralded downstairs show, showing more clearly the manner in which Picasso borrowed subject matter from his esteemed predecessors. For instance, in his ‘Portrait of a Woman after Cranach the Younger’ Picasso takes Cranach’s regal style and transforms it from a painting of dark, velvet-smooth flesh into a study in pattern and vibrant colour, more similar to a William Morris woodcut than a Renaissance oil painting.
In this exhibition, the National Gallery has managed to offer a different angle on a huge gathering of Picasso’s work. However, it is hard to come away from the exhibition without thinking that these efforts were unnecessary. Wherever there are 60 Picasso’s on display, people will turn up and hugely enjoy their magic. Any attempt to put a spin on these works can only open the gallery up for criticism of their struggle for a new angle on this prolific genius.
Picasso: Challenging the Past
The National Gallery, London
25 February-7 June 2009
The paintings:
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/exhibitions/picasso/slideshow/default.htm
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Comments
David Platzer
June 16th, 2009 7:09amI reviewed the Paris exhibition, "Picasso et les maîtres" for APOLLO (December 2008). You are mistaken in saying that in Paris Picasso's works were displayed next to "full-size reproductions of the paintings to which he responded". What helped make the Paris exhibition so exceptional an event was that, in most cases, the originals of the paintings that inspired Picasso were shown. Even Goya's "Maja Desnuda" was, for once, allowed to make the trip to Paris. The sole outstanding absence was Velazquez's"Las meninas".
I agree with the observation that Picasso was "borrowing from the past" rather than challenging it. In some instances, I have the feeling that he was even affectionately sending up the past.
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