Back in the mid 1980's the Museum of Modern Art in New York City devoted itself to a Pablo Picasso retrospective.

I wanted to visit my Aunt who lived in NYC and we got tickets. MOMA's 34 galleries were filled with Picasso artwork from the early 1900's to near his death 50/60 years later.

Guernica, Picasso's great anti-war painting, was still at MOMA. It has since traveled back to Spain.

I have always been at a loss for words when describing what people saw in the single gallery that housed Guernica.

Look at this picture and the technician at the far end. That's 25 feet long. The painting is 12.5 feet high. It is the wall. It fills the room.

It is breathtaking in B&W and people would stand for long times studying the painting for the detail contained in it. It is not a mural but a single panel painting.

http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/20 ... alth-check

Not everyone likes Picasso but to see this in person is stunning and magnificent. It is now housed in Picasso's beloved home country Spain as he intended.

That is one of the ugliest painting I have ever seen, it ranks right with one I saw in Chicago, big painting, about 8 by 10 ft, its was red, yes all red, fire engine red, it was a waist of paint and most importantly took up to much space on the wall where something beautiful could have placed.

River

Curiously, the Pittsburgh Public theater just had a production of "RED" a stageplay about Mark Rothko who created those all red canvases. It was a really good stageplay. I do understand that Rothko was monochromatic and red. hence the play's name "RED" ... The play explores his thought process.

The MOMA exhibit had 34 galleries filled with Picasso's public paintings from 1901 until he died. I say public because when David Douglas Duncan did one of his photography books of Picasso in the 90's, art historians all over the world saw paintings not in the catalogs. When Picasso died, he had two or three barns filled with paintings never seen in public.

Imagine that dilemma...

But to return to the post and not art history gossip.

About three galleries into the exhibit, in the year 1907 Picasso painted "The Ladies of Avignon" which wasn't seen publically until 1916 and when it hit the art world, there was Cubism, a new art form and a new proponent of that art form - Picasso. I stood six inches from that painting (it is 96 by 92 inches) and could see where PIcasso scrapped the paint away from the figures and repainted hte masks and lines that make it "cubist" that impressed me.

In 1951, PIcasso made a sculpture of a "baboon with young" (picture here: http://tedstanke.blogspot.com/2008/05/b ... f-era.html ) and once again, the art world was changed. Take a really good look at the head of the baboon. It's a child's Volkswagen toy. This became a new artform and was not seen before in the world of sculpture. I saw this up close and personal too. Charming statue made from pieces of stuff. Who was it that said it if you create one earth-shaking and world changing thing in your life you can find a place in history. Here are two. and as an aside, Mozart has dozens and is like unto a god.

Guernica simply took my breath away. To walk into a 30 by 40 gallery with Guernica on one wall, 25 feet wide and 12 feet high was one of the thrills of my life. It is raw and ugly and hurtful to look on but then to quote history "At about 16:30 on Monday, 26 April 1937, warplanes of the German Condor Legion, commanded by Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen, bombed Guernica for about two hours. "

And Picasso painted a screed against Franco and against war. Everything on it is a horror and is ugly and like the bombardment devastating to the eye. This wasn't a painting to please, this was a painting of death and destruction, the people are running, the animals are panicked, everything about it should disturb. Yes, it is an ugly painting.

It was at MOMA in 1939 when Hitler invaded Poland and Picasso told MOMA that it should never return to Spain until the government of Spain was democratic. That happened in 1992.

BTW - I have found that people either like Picasso or don't. He's not a middle of the road "gee that's nice" artist. And if Mark Rothko were alive and I said that to him, he would say "thanks, that's the nicest thing I've heard in years"...

{wink}{wink}

Sorry to go on so.

So he painted more then one in red? it looked like he used a 6" brush that you would use to paint a wall, he was no artiest, not even, as much as a dislike Picasso, this guy with the red brush should have been taken out and hung or shot for the crime of using red paint if for nothing else.

River

This is so charming to hear. In the play I told you about, they have discussions like this.

In fact, they prepare a huge canvas that's all red and then the audience gets to giggle and if they get the point of "RED" cheer. It is one color and it is stupendously one color and they discuss it and the audience is let into the mind of an artist and why a monochromatic canvas is art.

It's a two man play and Rothko and his "assistant" discuss it in the terms you are using. your words. They abuse the canvas, the Rothko character especially does that. the artist as critic inside the process.

You have no idea how much fun it is to read those words here.

You do "get it" ... It is "red" and that implies.

I have a tiny book with the script of the play. If I find it, I'll send it to you.

I'm not laughing at you. It's just having seen this play and seen Yasmin Reza's "ART" which is a comedy about a canvas that is all white and cost a pretentious gentleman a small fortune. It is OK to say "I don't like that" and other things.

You made my day with gales of laughter.

Thanks so very much.

I am so glad I made you laugh, I could easily play that part of the helper, OH could I.

"yes, I see what you mean, if you look close you can see the brush strokes are all going the same direction, just like I painted my fence, the only difference, I used Brown Paint, maybe that's why its still a fence out in the rain and wind and this is hanging here, I see what I did wrong, I used the wrong color paint".

Dave, I think of that picture, and I think what a waist of space.

River

Dave (imported) wrote: Sat Feb 25, 2012 8:39 am Back in the mid 1980's the Museum of Modern Art in New York City devoted itself to a Pablo Picasso retrospective.

I wanted to visit my Aunt who lived in NYC and we got tickets. MOMA's 34 galleries were filled with Picasso artwork from the early 1900's to near his death 50/60 years later.

Guernica, Picasso's great anti-war painting, was still at MOMA. It has since traveled back to Spain.

I have always been at a loss for words when describing what people saw in the single gallery that housed Guernica.

Look at this picture and the technician at the far end. That's 25 feet long. The painting is 12.5 feet high. It is the wall. It fills the room.

It is breathtaking in B&W and people would stand for long times studying the painting for the detail contained in it. It is not a mural but a single panel painting.

http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/20 ... alth-check

Not everyone likes Picasso but to see this in person is stunning and magnificent. It is now housed in Picasso's beloved home country Spain as he intended.

I just have to let you know, that I think Picasso sucks. I always have. Most of it looks like drawings my kids made. I think this is strictly a case of "The Emperor's New Clothes". To me it's an insult to the real works of art that are available for public viewing around the world. And I also think that the term "art critic" is also the biggest bunch of BS. The notion that some people know more about what people's opinions are about something that is subjective, is simply insane to me. And the only thing worse is those who listen to those who tell them what art is. Art is anything you like looking at, hearing, touching or even smelling. Plain and simple. No one can say what that is going to be for another person.

Elizabeth

...

Elizabeth (imported) wrote: Sun Feb 26, 2012 10:05 pm I just have to let you know, that I think Picasso sucks...

O.K.

Art is what makes you think. Be it you hate it or you like it. Public art is for creating opinions.

Dave (imported) wrote: Sun Feb 26, 2012 11:01 pm O.K.

Art is what makes you think. Be it you hate it or you like it. Public art is for creating opinions.

I am not sure if you intended it or not, but I detect a tad of condescension, as if to say that the fact that I don't like it tells you as much about me as liking it. As if almost to imply I have no taste? Perhaps I am reaching here to make a point? If that is the case please accept my apologies. However the notion that by me liking Picasso tells one anything of value about me, is dubious at best. While I speak of "The Emperor's New Clothes", tongue and cheek, I can also accept the fact that some people do find it to be art. I just don't think art is something that can be spoken about in any general way because it's all subjective. I feel who popular artists are have a lot more to do with public popularity campaigns than it does any real genuine sense that one piece of art is universally gratifying.

Elizabeth

As Dave says, there is no middle ground with Picasso. You either think his work is astounding or you think his Head of a Bull is a bicycle seat with handle-bars on the top. I have always been underwhelmed by Picasso's talent, which seems to have consisted mostly of marketing itself. There was at the same time a "primitive" artist, Henri Rousseau, whose "Dream" features a Tahitian girl and a tiger whom the good folk in the art world permitted to exhibit in the same same shows with Picasso. It is reported that after one such show, Rousseau's remark to Picasso "We are the two greatest painters of the age, you in the primitive and I in the modern style" was widely quoted to demonstrate Rousseau's lack of understanding, but a contemporary critic has remarked that "more and more, it is Picasso whose work now seems outmoded and Rousseau's that seems fresh and vital." I am afraid I am in agreement, it is Rousseau's work that still speaks. Picasso needs endless critics and guidebooks to give the background story so that the puzzled viewer can finally see what he was attempting (but never, I'm afraid succeeded) in conveying to the viewer. Rousseau needs no interpreters.

One final note, Rousseau used black in his paintings. Real "primitive" painters stay away from black and white because the tones are too absolute and it is beyond the skills of the untrained to use such startling colors. Anyone with a real eye in 1910 would have seen that "The Dream" was not the work of a self-trained amateur.