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X-WR-CALNAME:Stuck For Ideas
X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://stuckforlondon.com
X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Stuck For Ideas
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20161021
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20161021
DTSTAMP:20260725T122726
CREATED:20161021T151520Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20161021T151520Z
UID:4002-1477008000-1477094399@stuckforlondon.com
SUMMARY:Picasso Portraits
DESCRIPTION:Another room finds young Pablo in Paris\, lost in a world of art\, friends and partying. There’s an incredibly grotesque image of his friend Gustave Coquiot in a swirl of dancers and a genuinely stunning Blue Period portrait of Sebastia Junyer i Vidal.\nThen Picasso heads into cubism\, thanks in part to the model Fernande Olivier\, who features in so many of his works. Portraits of her and one absolute stunner depicting the art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler find Picasso on the path to greatness. \nYou then walk through a corridor of Picasso’s caricatures – which are interesting more than brilliant – and a room of almost totally unflattering portraits of his first wife Olga. But don’t be surprised that a lot of the paintings here far from good. Picasso created a lot of work\, and any show of his is bound to include a good fistful of guff. \nThe last room – the show's biggest and best – is where everything starts to make sense. There’s a near total lack of men\, it’s just Picasso stumbling from woman to woman\, from marriage to affair to marriage to affair\, and he documents his lust in paint. There’s Dora Maar as a flattened assemblage of soft lumps\, Marie-Thérèse Walter as a gently undulating collection of primary coloury\, a stunning fragile vision of Nusch Eluard\, a twisted rendering of Lee Miller and an image of his last wife Jacqueline Roque in a headscarf staring straight out at you\, patient as a saint. \nThis room is a document of lust\, of avarice and selfishness\, of love that bloomed and faded. Regret only seems to shine through in one painting\, depicting his by-then ex-lover sat behind their children as they draw – it’s the only image tinged with a sense of ‘whoops\, maybe I should’ve been a bit less of a shit’.\nYou might be thinking that all this is irrelevant\, that you should take the paintings at face value. But that’s the thing about portraiture: it’s never just about the paint on the canvas\, it’s about the story being told\, the person being depicted\, the why\, the when\, the how. You don’t leave this show thinking Picasso was any worse an artist than you went in thinking he was\, but you might leave thinking less of him as a person. Even when they're not all great\, getting to walk through room after room of Picassos is always going to be a treat. It’s just a shame he was such an asshole.
URL:https://stuckforlondon.com/view-event/picasso-portraits/
LOCATION:Oxo Tower Wharf\, London SE1\, UK\, London\, Devon\, SE1\, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:Art and Design
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://stuckforlondon.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/gWoqTgx.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="HE%20LONDON%20ILLUSTRATION%20FAIR":MAILTO:INFO@THELONDONILLUSTRATIONFAIR.CO.UK
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