Picasso: Drawing to Infinity

Review
Picasso – Dessiner à l’infini
October 18, 2023 – January 15, 2024
Centre Pompidou, Paris

Exhausting. Upon entering Picasso – Dessiner à l’Infini, one is confronted with an open exhibition structure, walls along walls filled with works in paper; vraiment à l’infini. First thought: perhaps this exhibition is like life. Looking at it from a distance, it’s overwhelming. But looking at it in close up – living it – it’s quite pleasurable.

The entrance section, “Visages” exemplifies pars pro toto the wealth of styles, phases, and materials in Picasso’s oeuvre on paper. There’s gouache, pencil, crayon, charcoal, ink. Many sitters are déjà connu: Fernande, le Marin, tête d‘homme; a study for Les Demoiselles d‘Avignon. The different media include different colours, the technique “drawing” here is not at all monotonous; in fact, it is very diverse. Paul seems a putto (Portrait de Paul, 1922), Fernande a Gothic maid (Fernande à la mantille blanche, Gosol, printemps-été 1906), l‘homme a Social Realist sculpture (Portrait d‘homme, Paris, décembre 1902).

The presentation is eclectic in its arrangement; then again, perhaps Picasso was – insatiable. The female figure is being loved, transformed, and violated. With best intentions, for art’s sake, of course.

The adjoining wall presents anatomical studies from Picasso’s early age. Limbs as if sculpted, or photographed in black and white. The charcoal drawings date from the end of the 19th century, when Picasso, aged 11, first enrolled at the fine arts school of A Coruña. They testify to an innocent, premature eroticism. – I want to touch these muscles, kiss these feet.

The pastels dating from around 1900 most prominently exhibit colour. Like the works before, they show the richness and diversity of styles, and the possibilities of one medium. The shapes of Vieille femme assise, Barcelone, are gently formed, the blue and violet colour around her body seem to caress, frame, protect her. Seen from a different perspective, the frame looks like a death bed.

Le Roi (1905) captivates through its simplicity, sincerity, and straightness. Brown, red, yellow-gold, little white on brown paper constitute a sober image from the ages. Like a king of Rohan, or Coppola’s Val Pfähler. It’s mastery in medium, an experiment in motif.

The works exhibited are humourist, serious, erotic, dreamerly, realist, dystopian (Trois Hollandaises, Schoorl, 1905). Des caprices, essentially empathetic, while egoistic. Art is love and love is possession; and Picasso had them all.

The studies for the Ballets Russes (Parade, 1917) are particularly rich in styles and inventiveness. To better catch the character of the different subjects – acrobats, magicians, circus managers –, Picasso drew from a multitude of styles employing cubist, symbolist, or classical elements. The poet Guillaume Apollinaire would later call this new aesthetic “sur-realism”.

The exhibition proposes an open itinerary, arranged in subjects rather than chronologically. Papiers collés, saltimbanques, autoportraits, drawn poems; violence, cubist compositions and animals, pointillist watercolours. The selection gives a round-up tour through Picasso’s entire oeuvre on paper.

What to make out of such a vast show, to infinity? Render homage to the master of the 20th century. And to the brilliant and thorough curators; study the motifs and materials, both for themselves and with regards to a specific artist; laugh, cry, hate, desire, admire, love – enjoy! #Thanksfortheparty.