We went to see the Picasso exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery today. I would recommend not going on a Sunday as it was very busy, but I recommend going very enthusiastically. It was a different way of looking at Picasso for me -- in the categories of the women who acted as his "muses" -- Fernande Olivier, Olga Khokhlova, Marie-Therese Walter, Dora Maar, Francoise Gilot, and Jacqueline Roque. It showed the influence the women had on different periods (especially Cubism and Surrealism) in Picasso's creative oeuvre -- the influence of someone like Dora Maar whose photography helped him explore new ways of seeing and expressing what he saw and Marie-Therese, whose influence was more emotional and physical. It was interesting to see one woman morph into another as Picasso lost interest in one relationship and found a new "muse" to be inspired by. Of course, ideas we have about Picasso -- the harsh angles and broken faces in multi-planar views -- are almost cliches, but seeing his work in all its variety was really exciting. I hadn't remembered (or maybe been aware of) his use of colours other than blue and grey and rose -- but there were lots of bright, Matisse-coloured pieces -- with yellows and reds and purples. Right next to highly Cubist work, painted at around the same time, are rolling sensuous pictures with lots of soft lines and starry eyes and playful scenes of his children.
One piece I had never seen came upon me as a complete and lovely surprise -- "Claude and Paloma" painted in 1950. I was looking at that famous picture of Dora Maar which is all terrible angles and tears and sharp fingernails and agony and then I went around the corner and saw this lovely brown and white and grey portrait of two round soft children in elaborate children's clothes, their faces placid and innocent, almost like dear little dolls. It brought tears to my eyes, because it was so beautiful and hopeful and sweet. After looking at Dora's record of Picasso's work on "Guernica", which is enormously moving in a completely different way, this picture really captured me.
Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed the show and would recommend it to all and sundry. I think it is best to go through the whole show and read all the blurbs, because I found them very helpful in pointing out the relationship between the woman and the work and then take a break and go back and just choose a couple of pieces that you really love and really live with them for a while. A couple of my other favourites were "Woman at a Window" which shows Francoise smiling softly as she looks out a frosty window, with her large hands placed on the icy pane, and the sculpture of "Head of a Woman" (1931) which has huge ping pong ball eyeballs and a big flap nose (supposed to be Marie-Therese). And all the reclining figures and a beautiful grey nude of Dora, with her reclining on a chair and she has her arms up to cradle her head and you can see both her profile and the soft side of her cheek and chin and her sinuous backbone and the muscles in her shoulders. It's magnificent. All of it gave me a new and stronger appreciation of Picasso and it's not like I didn't like him before. It on until October, and I will likely go again, because it was so great.
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