Latest news with #Picasso:Tête-à-tête
Time of India
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Picasso's iconic works at Gagosian NY
Critic and Curator Uma Nair has been writing for the past 35 years on art and culture She has written as critic for Times of India and Economic Times. She believes that art is a progressive sojourn. She learnt by looking at the best shows in Washington D.C. and New York. As author her most important books are Reverie with Raza and Meditations on Trees by Ompal Sansanwal. LESS ... MORE Paris museums have plenty of Picassos, but Paloma Picasso's collections at Gagosian in NY are singular and gripping, reflecting a daughter's taste, love and experiences for her father. Pablo Picasso stands tall for his iconic portraits and groundbreaking contribution to modern art across the world. This collection is fascinatingly strong and brings back Pablo Picasso's words of 1945. Lifelong practice 'What do you think an artist is ? An imbecile who has only eyes ? On the contrary, he's a political being, constantly alive to heart-rending, fiery, or happy events . . . Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war for attack and defence against the enemy.' Gagosian says the essential element of Picasso's lifelong practice, precisely what keeps his work both relevant and timeless, is his ability to stay fluid, in contradiction, always in restless anxiety and flirting with making a failure of it all. Picasso: Tête-à-tête, presented in partnership with the artist's daughter Paloma Picasso presents the full span of the artist's career—1896 to 1972— including nearly a dozen works that have not been shown for decades. Drawn largely from Picasso's estate, Picasso: Tête-à-tête is the final exhibition to be held at Gagosian's flagship 980 Madison Avenue gallery in New York. Gagosian closes its doors in New York with a Picasso show that rings through its magnificent spaces in a never before unveiling by his daughter Paloma . The sculptures, drawings and the paintings all create a carnival of form and fervour and his words sing till eternity. ' You should constantly try to paint like someone else. But the thing is, you can't! You would like to. You try. But it turns out to be a botch. . . . And it's at the very moment you make a botch of it that you're yourself.' Founder and galleries Larry Gagosian says: ' I have been fortunate to present more than twenty exhibitions dedicated to Pablo Picasso throughout my career, and it seems only fitting that a blockbuster show of the artist's work should close out our time at 980 Madison. It is incredibly exciting to partner with Paloma on her first major international exhibition, and to bring to light so many works that have never been shown before. The finest portrait is Femme au béret bleu assise dans un fauteuil gris, manches rouges (Marie-Thérèse), 1937. Almond, watchful eyes glow , the eyelids, the mouth, the fragmented angular fingers — splay out as well as dominate in in this fluid, half-classical, half-Cubist profile. Marie is a gentle, graceful spirit. This portrait is an elegant cadence of colours and fragmented forms that become a singular whole. The cubist idioms, the colours in softened sensual hues, this portrait is perhaps the testimony to the fulcrum of his creative genius. His formal experimentation and emotional intensity is embodied in Femme au béret ( Marie Therese) shown in profile but with her features presented frontally in the style that he had pioneered in his earlier portraits . His employment of a bold, primary palette and an emphatic handling of colours tones mark this work out from the depictions of the early 1930s and chart Picasso's evolving relationship with his muse. Femme au vase de houx (Marie-Thérèse) The second portrait of Marie also from the same show is treated a little differently but ever so charismatic and enchanting. The still life and the portrait create an ensemble of elegance. Picasso's feminine portraits sing to us so many years hence. The crimson red lends this work an intensity that is only heightened by the colours of Marie's face as well as her clothing, the yellows, blues and greens, which are thrust into such bold relief through their contrast with the near-monochrome background. Meanwhile, the almost lavender-infused skin becomes like cool marble in contrast to these vivid colors. Picasso has filled the composition with jagged lines, peaks and striations, not least through the hatching of the hairnet of the title, bringing the sense of edginess and volatility that is often associated with his depictions of Dora. At the same time, the statuesque poise and the curves and swirls on her cheek bring out a sense of tenderness that is heightened by the skin tones, which themselves recall some of Picasso's earliest, less-stylised images of his lover. Stirring still lives and monochromatic magic Through the show, so ingenious in display we can gaze at monochromatic morsels that pull the human faces and bodies into geometric the few sculptures and the drawings and paintings we sense the passion and force of this artist who gave the world a new language. Sometimes it is brooding colour tones within contours of vitality, sometimes it is the lithe lines of a sculptural flat linearity. Corridors of the past The beauty of these unseen works is hinged on the words of Picasso himself that bring forward the corridors of conversations in the past. 'I shift about too much, I move too often,' Picasso told André Verdet in 1963. 'You see me here, and yet I've already changed, I'm already elsewhere. I never stay in one place and that's why I have no style.' This was evident in Picasso's very first exhibition, a show of sixty-four paintings and an unknown number of drawings at Ambroise Vollard's Paris gallery in 1901. In his review of that show, the critic Félicien Fagus wrote, 'One can easily discern . . . numerous probable influences. . . . Each is fleeting, no sooner caught than dropped. . . .The danger for him lies in this very impetuousness, which could so easily lead to facile virtuosity and easy success.' Run your eyes over the masterpieces from small to medium , and you are met with the sinuous, flowing lyricism that has been inspired by Marie-Thérèse Walter. At once we sense the atmospheric terms and fecund forms as well as pulsing colour and brilliance of an artist who still engages in mediums and materials. Picasso's daughter Paloma Picasso says: ' I was delighted when Larry suggested we work together on a significant exhibition. Showing my father's work as he wanted it to be seen—in conversation across subjects and periods—is a fitting tribute to his legacy. A number of the works we selected haven't been seen since my father had them in his studio and to have them reunited with important examples from other collections will be a very special event.' Images: Gagosian NY Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
The Guardian
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I didn't know they existed': US exhibition highlights rarely seen Picasso artwork
Hosting a showing of Pablo Picasso's art isn't like putting together your normal gallery exhibition. For one thing, gathering the art of the prodigious Spaniard requires a lot more overhead than most shows. As Michael Cary, the resident Picasso expert at Gagosian gallery, told me: 'Picasso shows are museumy. Most of them have lots of loans from museums, so these kinds of exhibitions are very costly to put on, with all the insurance and shipping and assorted costs with bringing these works to New York City.' Yet there are great rewards for exhibiting Picasso. It is a huge prestige boost to any gallery that manages to pull all that art together, and the celebrity factor tends to drive tons of engagement from visitors. Moreover, just selling a single piece can put the whole enterprise in the black. 'I'm imagining that Larry [Gagosian] really likes Picasso's market,' Cary laughed as we talked about Picasso: Tête-à-tête, Gagosian's latest show for the artist. And he should – in 2016 Gagosian sold the sculpture Bust of a Woman for $106m. According to Cary, nobody does more Picasso shows than the storied New York gallery. Cary himself has worked on 13 Picasso shows since joining Gagosian in 2008, and the gallery's relationship with Picasso's art spans back to the 1990s. Gagosian's website lists 40 shows involving his works. 'Picasso is a high-stakes game,' Cary told me. 'You don't accidentally or casually put on a Picasso show. It takes a lot of planning, a lot of hard work. And trying to show audiences something that haven't expected and that they don't anticipate with Picasso is high stakes as well.' Gagosian hopes to do just that with an enormous exhibition that spans the entirety of Picasso's creative life. Notably, Picasso's daughter Paloma has opened up her collection of her father's art for Tête-à-tête, exhibiting about a dozen never-before-seen pieces. She has also helped to organize the show, as she has taken on a larger and larger role with her father's art after becoming responsible for administering Picasso's estate two years ago. 'It's wonderful having a collaborator who trusts us and trusts us enthusiastically,' Cary said of Paloma. 'It's disarming because Paloma is so informal and so friendly. There's an enthusiasm that's very, very rare.' The show is centered around one of Picasso's best-known works, the 1909 sculpture Tête de Femme (Fernande), which Cary called 'arguably the most important sculpture of the 20th century'. One of about 20 such casts known to exist, it is modeled on the head of Picasso's muse and lover Fernande Olivier. The striking bronze cast is generally considered to be Picasso's first cubist sculpture and a pioneering moment in the development of the cubism movement. Cary and his team have 'paired' Tête de Femme with a ceramic bust that is a portrait of Paloma's mother, which Cary humorously described as a 'cookie jar'. The discordance is the point, as Tête-à-tête strives to present Picasso's art as Gagosian imagines the Spaniard would have wanted it: free from grouping into different schools or periods, arranged thoughtfully together in surprising and unexpected ways. 'We're putting the most important sculpture of the 20th century next to something that looks like a cookie jar,' Cary told me. 'We don't make a distinction between those two things because Picasso didn't make a distinction.' The two têtes make for one of many such pairings that Gagosian hopes will evoke 'dialogues' as audiences make connections between the pieces in the show. Cary explained that the concept comes from Picasso's first retrospective, in 1932, which he hung himself, charting his own path by completely eschewing categorization of his art. 'Picasso hung very different works of very different styles next to each other so that they could talk to each other,' he said. 'This is how he intended us to encounter his work. Picasso rejected this idea of breaking up his body of work into periods – that was academic, that was criticism. When I presented that to Paloma she got sparked, she said: 'Oh, that's a fun idea, it gives us the chance to hang things in a different way.'' There are many undiscovered treasures in Tête-à-tête. In spite of being a Picasso scholar who has worked on numerous Picasso shows for Gagosian for nearly 20 years, Cary was astonished by never-before-exhibited pieces that he had never even heard about. 'It was really exciting for me because I'm such a Picasso nerd.' Cary told me. 'Paloma sent us a list of pieces and it just blew our minds. Not only hadn't I seen many of them, I didn't know they existed.' These never-before-exhibited works include the remarkable 1958 bronze sculpture Figure, as well as a trio of portraits of Picasso's so-called golden muse Marie-Thérèse Walter, done in surprisingly different styles. According to Cary, there is always something new to discover with Picasso because he was so prolific and so enormously varied in his output. 'Picasso is such a vast and complex subject,' he said. 'A really prolific artist might make 5,000 works, but Picasso made about 25,000. Just keeping up with the literature alone is a full-time job. The complexity is always prompting new questions – there's always something new to look at, always something new to try.' Tête-à-tête will be Gagosian's last show at their longtime home at 980 Madison Avenue, and because of that the gallery will be staging it for longer than usual – nearly three months total. For Cary, having the time to really be with the works for an extended duration is a special thing, one that he hopes audiences take advantage of. 'This is a long show for us, and that's another thing that feels particularly good, that we don't have to get the works out of here at a particular time,' he said. 'These works are amazing, I want to look at them every day for as long as I can. I want people to come back and see them as many times as possible. It feels like an extra gift.' Picasso: Tête-a-tête is on show at Gagosian in New York from 18 April until 3 July 2025
