This past year the Museum of Modern Art published four little books on Modernist giants Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Joan Miró and Henri Matisse. Each 48-page survey is heavily illustrated. Carolyn Lanchner, who was curator of painting and sculpture at MOMA for over three decades, wrote the accompanying texts, which at times take the tone of a guided tour.
Pablo Picasso, like the other volumes, contextualizes the work, includes some biographical details, and discusses MOMA's relationship to the artist's œuvre. The Museum of Modern Art acquired their first Picasso in 1930, a year after the institution opened. MOMA currently holds over 1,200 pieces made by the Spanish artist, from the simple sketch La belle qui passe to Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon, which had an enormous impact when it was unveiled to the public decades after its creation and continues to resonate today.
Pablo Picasso's Approach Is Assemblage
Whether the reader has seen Picasso's work at MOMA numerous times or never, this book offers the opportunity to make new connections. Picasso is well known for his groundbreaking assemblages, for instance. But browsing through the book and considering his work from 1901 to the late 1950s, the term assemblage becomes more nuanced. Indeed, his entire life's work is an assemblage. In 1921, Picasso painted both the Cubist Three Musicians and Three Women at the Spring, a two-dimensional work that feels very sculptural.
It's tempting to say that only an artist of Picasso's caliber could make two such works in the same year. Each is ambitious and exceptional in its own right. And, although the paintings echo one another compositionally, they're quite distinct on formal and stylistic levels. It's intriguing to consider the notion of assemblage at work on a larger scale, not just within a given piece, but from one large-scale piece to the next.
Divergent Styles, Influences, Materials: Picasso's Guitar
Some would say these differing works are an example of Picasso's divergent styles and practices. Indeed, this is a large part of his genius. He was able to explore different media and styles not only to make work both that is beautiful and challenging, but to advance artistic dialogue. He was a major pioneer of the collage, for instance, which might be considered a two-dimensional assemblage.
Exploring the possibilities that materials had to offer, Picasso painted with oil on canvas, made bronze sculptures, and recuperated newspaper and combined it pencil and gouache. He also used sheet metal and wire to make the Cubist sculpture Guitar, which is in the book, and Lanchner clearly and concisely discusses the radical formal aspects of it in her essay.
In addition to the books on Picasso, Miró, Warhol, and Matisse that MOMA published, there is an additional title about Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night. All of the books are colorful, brief, and portable, a nice answer to the typical hardcover coffee table book. Lanchner's essays read like exhibition brochures at times, but have the weight and depth of a curator who has spent decades with the work and has done her research, and they function well with the carefully chosen images.
Read more about Pablo Picasso and MOMA at the Art Books blog.
Pablo Picasso, text by Carolyn Lanchner. The Museum of Modern Art, 2008. ISBN: 9780870707230
 |
