Pablo Picasso's "Massacre in Korea" (1951)
The Picasso of the contemporary American imagination and the Picasso of flesh and blood deserve adequate distinction. Because of his universally accepted greatness, it’s easily taken for granted that the same painter could produce both the glowing anthem-portraits of his Rose Period and jagged political commentary such as “Guernica.” It doesn’t help that Picasso’s reputation is so gargantuan as to be nearly self-propagating—nor that his name has not only earned a requisite mention in every elementary- and high school visual arts class, but become a descriptor, synonymous with excessive artistic ability. All of this results in a numbed appreciation for the man himself: a hallowed agreement on his importance that, counter-intuitively, lets much of his richness fall by the wayside.
But when pieces born of markedly disparate periods of his life find themselves side by side in an exhibition, the anesthetizing fog vanishes. In its place is an awe that such a multifaceted talent ever lived, along with many questions—questions that artistic consensus generally put to rest decades ago, but questions worth asking again. Gone, for sure, is any sense of homogeneity; experiment, instinct, and the process of trial and error stand out instead. In Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris, the extensive collection of masterpieces and tangents on display in the de Young Museum in San Francisco, the artist’s body of work absconds from whatever pedestal it’s been placed on in the past half-century to pursue a hundred different modes of brilliance. (The show closes on October 10.)
