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Picasso, His Cohorts and Their Spawn in Philadelphia

March 11. 2010

The Man Himself

Every once in a while I visit some Picassos just to ascertain how I’m feeling about the Big Man. It varies over time. Of course, I am in awe of his prodigious output and of his singular place in the history of the last 100 years, not just in art but in virtually every aspect of the way we view ourselves and our culture. But. With very few exceptions, Picasso’s work has never moved me viscerally and I keep checking in to see whether that’s still the case.

Gris, The Lamp

With that in mind, I traveled to Philadelphia last weekend to see the blockbuster Picasso show. Actually, notwithstanding the advertising and the gigantic “Picasso” banner affixed to the front of the (truly fabulous) Philadelphia Museum of Art, the exhibit is titled “Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris and even that is deceptive. The Picassos in this yoooooge exhibit are outnumbered by a factor of about 10 by artwork by the large cast of the artworld characters who lived or tarried in Paris from about 1905 through post-World War II. That includes everyone from the usual cubist suspects – Gris, Braque, DuChamp – through a whole raft of surrealists, traveling Americans and migrating Eastern Europeans (that would be the Jews).

Picasso, Glass of Absinthe

The true value of the exhibit is to place Picasso in context, to assess his impact and to demonstrate that the astonishing influence Paris exerted as ground zero for western art was the product of the creative collaboration of a shifting group of artists and movements. The case becomes a bit tenuous as it approaches mid-century, but on the whole it is well made.

Brancusi, Portrait of Mme Pagany

So what did I learn? First, the earliest cubist workfrom 1910 - 13 by Picasso, Braque and Gris is virtually indistinguishable and I really like the stronger, more distinct forms that are characteristic of Gris. One could credibly contend that Duchamp’s 1912 “Nude Descending A Staircase” was a more advanced example of cubism than anything Picasso had done to date. Leger’s 1919 “The City” is a masterpiece that foreshadows the urban, industrial themes of the 20’s and 30’s.

Leger, The City

Second, Picasso and his cohorts in the first tranche of cubists were themselves influenced by the movements that succeeded them, most notably surrealism and the conservative “back to order” movement after WWI. There are a number of paintings that make this abundantly clear. So the exchange of ideas was hardly all one way.

Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas

Paris was the magnetic epicenter of the art world and artists and wannabes flocked there to worship at the altar and to try their hand at the new way of seeing. There are examples here of a couple of dozen artist’s work who experimented with cubist principles before moving on to their own styles. There is also a suite of fabulous photographs, many formal portraits by Carl Van Vechten, of many of the artists and a few of the popular entertainers like Josephine Baker and Bricktop. Picasso always looks dapper and satisfied.

Picasso, Man With a Lamb

And my Picasso/Weiss self-assessment? Nothing dramatic. I am more attracted to Picasso’s sculptural work and maybe even “viscerally” moved. There is a small painted bronze made in 1914 in the show called “A Glass of Absinthe” that looks like nothing else from that time and it knocked me out. And the post-WWII “Man With A Lamb” is a monumental image of sacrifice and supplication in the face of the carnage of war. I am even more impressed than ever with the chutzpah and fearlessness of this group of artists early in the 20th century who proclaimed that the world had to be seen differently.

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