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Indepth Arts News:
"Picasso érotique"
2001-06-14 until 2001-09-16
Montreal Museum of Fine Art
Montreal, QC,
CA
From June 14 to September 16, 2001, the Montreal
Museum of Fine Arts will be hosting an unprecedented exhibition, entitled
Picasso érotique. Bringing together approximately 350 works, 40 canvases,
100 gouaches, watercolours and original drawings (including his notebooks), 100
etchings and 30 sculptures and ceramics, this exhibition is designed to elucidate
an aspect of Picasso's work all too often suppressed, yet indissociable from his art
- eroticism.
To date, no museum has ever undertaken to present this essential dimension of the
artist's creations. These works express a rare audacity and spirit of freedom, but
have received very limited public exposure. Indeed, the presentation at the
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is a premiere event in North America. The
exhibition Picasso érotique is organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
in co-production with the Réunion des musées nationaux, France, the Musée
national Picasso, Paris, the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, and the
Museu Picasso, Barcelona. The collection began its tour in Paris, at the Galerie
nationale du Jeu de Paume, February 19 to May 20, 2001, and will conclude at the
Museu Picasso in Barcelona, October 25, 2001, to January 25, 2002. Montreal
will be the only North American city to host the exhibition.
Art is never chaste (Pablo Picasso)
Love, desire and sex are inextricably linked to Picasso's work, whose creative
genius was unfettered by sexual hypocrisy. Eroticism was a constant source of
inspiration for Picasso and is manifest in works from his early youth. Nearing the
end of his life, when Picasso reached the last leg of his artistic journey (as one of
the most influential artists of the 20th century), he was still triumphantly
expressing the same obsessive theme in his works. In fact, throughout his career,
Picasso never stopped painting, drawing and representing intimate scenes,
majestic nudes, enticing bodies, couples holding each other and lovers in the
throes of torrid embraces. His depictions are ingenious, tender, humorous, fiery,
violent and passionate.
Survey of works
The Early Years
By the time he was twenty, Picasso was frequenting the seamy
neighbourhoods of Barcelona. At that time, a large portion of his work
was dedicated to his first sexual experiences (Embrace, Two Figures
and a Cat, The Brothers Mateu and Ángel Fernández de
Soto, with Anita, El Virgo and The Mackerel). The prostitutes he
painted and drew (in his Carnet, or sketchbook) inspired the very
famous Demoiselles d'Avignon. This brothel scene, both imagined and
experienced around Carrer d'Avinyò (Avignon) in Barcelona, marked
the birth of cubism. Around the same time, we also see the artist's first
representations of embraces, associated with meeting Fernande Olivier.
Between the Wars
From his depictions of Olga to those of Marie-Thérèse, the artist never
ceased to explore, deconstruct and reinvent bodies, the objects of his
desire (as in Reclining Nude, Woman in an Armchair, Nude in
a Garden, Figures at the Seashore and Coupling) and of his
violent urges (as in The Kiss and The Rape). During this period,
Marie-Thérèse Walter is represented alone and asleep, epitomizing
amorous bliss. In both Picasso's paintings and his sculpture, she is
depicted as the artist's model or is confronted with the Minotaur (as in
Minotaur Raping a Woman). This theme disappears after Dora
and the Minotaur.
Maturity
During the 1950s and 1960s, Picasso produced - in various styles and
techniques - numerous works based on the themes of the kiss, the
embrace, copulation, bestiality, exhibitionism and orgies. At 80 years of
age, Picasso worked more intensively as an etcher. More than 60 years
after he produced his first brothel scenes, the same theme reappeared-but,
at this late juncture, it was more of a fantasy than a lived reality. Of
course, the theme of the voyeur was also present in these pieces. The
various suites of etchings produced during this period include Raphael
and La Fornarina and The Maison Tellier (inspired by some
Degas monotypes), and his Celestinas combine humour and a certain
degree of remoteness. In etchings and drawings from this period, Picasso
focussed especially on the erotic charge produced in the relationship
between painter and model.
Works suppressed by puritanism
Incredible blasts of eroticism permeate all of Picasso's work,
including his written work. The act of creation evoked tornadoes of
desire in him, says Jean-Jacques Lebel, guest curator for the presentation of
the Montreal exhibition. But this wild relationship with Eros, one of the great
driving forces of Picasso's work, was denied and downplayed throughout the 20th
century in various ways. Art sellers and gallery owners felt that the heightened
sensuality in some of Picasso's works might alienate him from private and public
collectors in the United States. Fearing a puritanical or prudish backlash against
the artist, they therefore relegated these works to his studio or held clandestine
exhibits in art galleries. Picasso's erotic or blatantly pornographic works got a
chilly reception from official art circles in France, known for their
conservatism-only much later did these milieus reluctantly acknowledge the
artist's innovations. After World War II, Picasso joined the French Communist
Party, further quelling enthusiasm for his bold works, which were far removed
from the puritanical diktats of his new entourage. In Spain, it was not until the
death of Franco in 1975 that some works from the beginning of the century,
formerly deemed overly provocative, were at last shown.
In the early 1970s, these audacious works had only begun to be exhibited and
remained largely misunderstood. During the 1973 exhibit in Avignon, one
prudish critic took umbrage, accusing the last luminary of modern art of
libidinous exhibitionism.
It is true that these fascinating-disturbing images may give viewers the odd
impression that they have just indiscreetly barged into a private room where they
ought to have knocked before entering. However, there is no gratuitous
sensationalism to be found in these saucy, jubilant visions.
Eros and Thanatos
In his twilight years, the odes to pleasure and sensuality infusing all of Picasso's
work were born of powerful meditations and were produced amid eruptions of
Eros, the life breath of art and creation. At this time, Picasso was doing battle with
Thanatos (Death) by symbolically exorcising its approach. Thus, it would be
simplistic to attribute Picasso's extraordinary explosion of eroticism in his later
years to the lascivious compulsions of a lustful old man. To do so would to be to
repudiate the genius that still inhabited the artist, who was redoubling his struggle
against time at age 85. Picasso, rebelling against the idea that one day his life must
end, committed to paper and canvases the life force that remained within him.
By expressing his desire, says Jean-Jacques Lebel, Picasso found the
courage to face death.
A universal artistic approach
It should be stressed that Picasso was not the first artist to produce erotically
inspired paintings. Eroticism can be found throughout art history, from Antiquity
and the Renaissance up to Delacroix, Manet, Courbet, Degas, and among many
other painters who were of great interest to Picasso.
The catalogue
The exhibit is complemented by a generously illustrated 368-page catalogue,
published in English by Prestel and French by Éditions de la Réunion des musées
nationaux. Contributing authors include, Jean Clair, Marie-Noëlle Delorme,
Dominique Dupuis-Labbé, Malén Gual, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Marilyn McCully,
Maria Teresa Ocaña, Robert Rosenblum and Brigitte Baer. Writers Pascal
Quignard, Annie Le Brun, and Patrick Roegiers are also special contributors to
this publication.
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