Picasso, mystique et amoureux

Le British Museum  a réussi à rassembler pour la première fois les gravures de l’un des plus grands artistes du xx^e siècle.

Le visiteur pourrait s’attendre à pouvoir admirer la technique du peintre, par ses croquis dessinés rapidement, parfois juste en passant un coup de téléphone. On peut bien sûr apprécier sa maîtrise des formes, mais cela va plus loin. C’est moins la face académique de Picasso qui ressort, que son caractère de bon vivant et son profond goût pour les femmes.


Gravure du groupe sur le thème du Minotaure, Suite Vollard, British Museum, Londres.

Exécutées entre 1930 et 1937, à un moment où il était plongé dans la sculpture et la relation entre l’artiste et son modèle, les mythes païens et le corps des femmes sont au cœur de cette série. Le Minotaure, la femme nue (sa maîtresse de l’époque Marie-Thérèse Vollard), les animaux, sont les expressions d’un Picasso intime, sensuel et jouisseur.

L’exposition du British Museum est ouverte jusqu’au 2 septembre. En attendant d’y aller, vous pouvez consulter Picasso, disponible en version papier et ebook.

Doodling with Picasso

The British Museum has managed to wheedle the donation of all one-hundred of Picasso’s etchings which make up the Vollard Suite – no, not the name of a room in a curiously themed hotel, but a massive series of prints created in exchange for a couple of paintings, including two by Cézanne and Renoir.

The critics are clambering all over each other to fawn, simper and gush about the prints and to offer their unsolicited opinions about what the lines and shading could possibly mean, squabbling like children over who can kiss the most arse. I agree that the series does reveal the inner workings of the mind of the artist during a transitional period, but only insofar as my absent-minded phone-doodling offers an insight into my thoughts at that particular moment in time. Ok, so a picture of a stick man and a flower might not be quite as impressive as a Minotaur with breasts, but doodles was what they were, no more, no less.


By Pablo Picasso, aged 43. He drew this horse whilst nattering on the phone. FACT.
Little Horse, 1924(?). Indian ink on paper, 21 x 27.2 cm, The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

Trading a couple of paintings by known masters for prints by a living artist was a bit of a gamble, but the trick certainly paid off. Well, not for poor old Ambroise Vollard, who died the same year the prints were completed, but a few generations and changes of hand later, and the set is now worth a staggering £900,000. The fools! Picasso’s status as an excellent artist is well-deserved, but just because he is a good artist does not mean that all his art is good art. Once the buzz from this discovery evaporates, I wonder whether they will realise that they’ve been had.

In case the British Museum is interested, I have a few prints for sale, entitled “Tree”, “Swirly Pattern” and “To Do List”. Each one costs £4,500, a bargain at half the price of a Picasso print!

If, contrary to my warning, you want to see these scribblings, the British Museum is holding this exhibition for free until 2 September 2012. If, however, you’d rather see some of Picasso’s real artwork, why not get this Picasso art book, instead.