Review: PICASSO - Stealing from Painting and Invigorating Sculpture

Picasso: Stealing from Painting and Invigorating Sculpture

By Barry Kostrinsky

MoMA's must see exhibit of the year is definitely the Picasso Sculpture show up until February 7th 2016.We all know Picasso as that painter that put some odd eyes on faces, gave us multiple views of a sitting figure at once and the great thief that Giacometti would not let in his studio.

The preground for Pablo's inventiveness is buried in debt to Van Gogh ( image from 1890 above) , Gauguin, Derain and many of the post impressionist. The gates were flung wide open with Van Gogh around 1890 as he opened the way for painterly and individual expressionism with an eye to nature and what is beyond the seeable through the seeable. Picasso's move to Paris put him at the right place at the right time.

Picasso was like that friend who after you have done most of the crossword puzzle comes along and does the last clue for you. Pablo was able to synthesize what had come before and see where it would lead. Today we see art at a dead end, as if everything has been done already.

Andre Derain's early 1900 work reflects the creative freedom in the air at the time of Picasso's coming of age.

At the turn of the century the artistic freedom of the times gave us our first blue and red trees with boats that were colored like an amusement park and a new effort at braking the picture plane in painting and sculpture artists today are still toying with and nastily dubbed derivative for. In this creative environment Picasso expanded and re-vocabulized the history of painting and brought from his paint box tools to revolutionize artists approach to sculpture.

Picasso's greatest skill may have been his ability to sculpt with his painterly sense and to use his painterly tools in the 3 dimensional space as evident in this work from 1954 titled Sylvette. The lines parallel lines (don't you wished you paid more attention in math class now) lead our eye to vanishing points that shrink and expand the figure. It is as if he is treating his sculpture as a painting and remodeling the 3 dimensions the sculpture sits in to give us a multi-dimension object that does not just sit in its space but tries to reach into a deeper dimensioned world. Pablo used his knowledge of how to trick 2 dimensional space to feel like three dimension as a weapon to gouge a new field for sculpture.

Is Picasso relevant today: just look at contemporary art and you will see Pablo was playing 80 years earlier in a space many artist of today have entered.

Yes, Pablo opened up the materials of sculpting with a mix of items once thought outside the realm of high art or art for that matter. By taking a bicycle handle and transforming it into a bulls horn with the Bicycle seat Pablo enters the Duchampian game with a sense of play. Pablo's piece recalls the Champs Bicycyle works that in their abstraction and cerebral overtones seem to speak of a more serious statement about conceptual art.

Picasso's interest in African Sculpture is well documented and most notable mentioned in reference to Les Demoiselle D'Avignon pictured above. The date is hard to define on this piece as rumor has it Pablo went back and predated the work to seal his authorship of cubism and steal it from the joint efforts he and Braque collaborated on whilst painting together in the south of France.

There is no doubt in my mind Les Demoiselle is one of the most over-rated paintings in the history of art.Yes, he shows courtisans for our gaze- so did Manet.Yes, he embellishes the work with African mask like faces and lines. But the piece does not do it for me. The work seems contrived and to emphasize a statement rather than being an honest statement- the work seems provoked by his interest in African art and not provocative. Maybe these are the colored eyes of a contemporary artist that have seen shit and piss paintings and so Pablo's power has denigrated with time. Indeed his use of Passage to trick the space at the edges and to give the painting an eerie undefined depth and action is less successful than the analytic cubist pieces and seems to only do so minimally. The lines on the face were stolen for their formal value from the tool box of African artists. Indeed, when Picasso bought African masks he often removed the nails hammered into the figures to get at the form below. This was a mistake. The nails were a vital part of the symbolism and meaning of the piece and in essence he destroyed the pieces. But he took his tools and used them well.

Above, a Picasso sculpture on the right brings to mind rare Bali figures (on the left) made by African artist/artisans/craftsman/shaman- what ever you like to call them- lets leave it at well revered religious figures themselves in the tribes with the power to call forth a spirit from the past to inhabit the figures.

The African Bali pieces were made with bones, dirt, blood, hair, honey, metal and various very real pieces of reality. Do not use these ingredients for your next soup. Pablo has taken the shape, reduced it to a minimal form by drawing the circles and lines and receded the head in space by making it smaller giving the figure a feeling of more depth in space than it should have.

Giacometti did well to bar Pablo from his studio pictured above. There is a section in the MoMA exhibit where you see Pablo enters Giacometti's space of the tall and skinny.

This series from 1930 must have made Giacometti itch.

Picasso's tall and skinny variations on Giacometti in 1930 were carved from left over canvas wood stretchers. This is probably more a testament to ability to use what is available than to make a deep statement about painting and sculptures interweaving and connections.

The 1964 piece, Tete, sandwiched between drawings by Pablo shows how drawing and sculpture for Picasso were interwoven and aided each other.

How could I not mention those guitars from the early part of the 20th century. Pablo has deconstructed the form, taking elements of the guitar and delved into and juxtaposed them in slightly different ways. Each piece and part plays a dynamic role that screams guitar. The works seems to vibrate guitar as Munch's scream painting vibrates angst. How does he do this? He does it but doing what Van Gogh did; however instead of looking deeply at nature in a field of trees and flowers he is looking richly into the formal elements of form and parading them out, each one as a vulnerable monumental element. Their power is in their truth, simplicity and non-perfect edges much the way a Van Gogh painting gets it strength. Together these fragile players they sing guitar in a voice louder than one representation, angle or element could.

The exhibit had me at its first room. And it will have you too if you just look, openly and freely at the playfulness and complexity of the simplicity Picasso engages.

A thief? Yes, Picasso was a thief. A crook? No, Pablo stole but stealing is a part of the art world. The art world has many different layers and circles; Some intersect, some don't. In the end, the field of forms is their for everyone to see, evolve, devolve or replicate. The trail of who influence who and who came up with it first will forever be buried in the lies of history.

For those of you still here I'd like to offer an unabashed promotion. I am moderating a panel for the ATOA - Artists Talk On Art Series this Tuesday from 6:30pm- 8pm on art in the outer boroughs beyond Manhattan at the Tenri Gallery and Cultural Center 43A West 13th Street. Hope to see you there!

http://www.atoa.org/Fall2015/October.htm#10/20

https://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1559

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