A new exhibition at the BMA, Picasso: The Final Years, explores the experimentation and realization that the master artist discovered in the final years of his life from 1945 to 1968. This is a one-gallery exhibition with works as varied as drawings, lithographs and even large paintings, but Picasso's fascination with the art of printing may be the most central part of this exhibit and his later work in general. From March to September 1968, in only six short months, Picasso created 347 prints known as the 347 Suite. While his paintings may be daunting in their size and ingenuity the real star of this exhibit are his inventive prints.
After World War II, there was a swift change in Picasso's life when he met Fran8doise Gilot, a young art student, and began a serious relationship with her, which would eventually lead to their having two children together. She became a frequent subject of his work from this period. There are two bare lithographs of Gilot in the exhibit from 1946. These drawings are composed of very simple shapes -- her face a large circle, her neck a wide rectangle -- yet they manage to convey a sense of beauty in a way that a full treatment in oil and canvas would never achieve.
Picasso was fascinated by the interplay between black and white. He could achieve something different each time with small, subtle changes. Gilot left Picasso in 1953; his next two lovers were Genevieve Laport and Jacqueline Roque, the latter twenty-something when she met Picasso, a man 50 years her senior.
Both also figure prominently in his work from this period. Jacqueline in A Straw Hat, from 1962, is a linoleum cut print that features a somewhat worried Roque drawn out in strong, abstract colors. It is a prime example of his many depictions of Roque in the surrounding time period.
Perhaps the most dazzling piece in the exhibit is a work titled Two Women Awakening, from 1959. It is a brown and black linoleum cut of two women in a bed; one has an outstretched neck like a chariot rider as she is looking out the window, while the other is in an almost fetal position, seemingly in a fit of fear or despair. This was done in a new medium called a one-block linocut, which Picasso himself developed. This allowed for him to print beautiful colors on paper with a process that used linoleum printing instead of the standard wood-block printing, because linoleum was a softer and more malleable substance than wood and allowed him to achieve more subtle effects. The final product as seen by this work is remarkable.
A main theme running throughout the exhibit and Picasso's later art in general is his meditation on the artist at work. There are numerous small prints of Picasso painting a subject: Some are just drabs of lines that somehow form a remarkably identifiable painter and his subject with an easel in between like a giant wall. This no doubt serves to contrast the artist and his subject and underscore the point that there is always some form of impenetrable screen between the two. The painter can never truly capture the subject for what it is in itself, but always captures it through his own mind's eye. This is definitely an appropriate theme for a painter who had redefined the art of painting itself in his younger days with his development of cubism-- a most subjective form of art at the time.
The exhibit seems to have a very eclectic mix of Picasso's later work, but seeing how different most of the pieces in the exhibition are from each other, this showing would have benefited from being a bit bigger. Picasso's later works were of broadly different styles, and especially as this exhibit spans more than two decades of the artist's life, a three- or four-room exhibit where his last 25 years are broken up seems more appriate. Also, for some reason the exhibit has not chosen any works later than 1968, though Picasso did not stop producing creative works until his death in 1973. These last couple years of his work were dismissed by many observers at the time, though it has since recognized that Picasso was only ahead of his time developing a technique that would later be called neo-expressionism.
The first thing you notice when you walk into the exhibit may not be any of Picasso's prints or paintingsm but the the giant photograph of the artist by Irving Penn on the left-hand side of the room. One of Picasso's eyes is hidden in the shadow and only a single large eye is visible in the foreground of this black-and-white picture. His shirt collar is up above his mouth, and he is wearing a large hat.
These strange dimensions of the image suggest some of Picasso's own toying with the anatomy of the face. One can't help but think of that playful, watchful eye as you slowly stroll through the exhibit. The whole room's existence seems to stem from his virile imagination; with each new and striking work you come across it is hard to forget that looming photograph of the mischievous genius in the corner.
