“Picasso, joy in life”,
Palazzo Grassi, Campo San Samuele 3231, 34124
Venice. Tel.: (39) (0) 41-523-16-80. Until March 11, 2007.
“Picasso, to paint against
time”, Albertina Museum, Albertinaplatz 1,
A-1010 Vienna. Tel.: (43) (0) 15-34-830. Until January 7, 2007.
Picasso loved the women. Two exhibitions, one
in Venice, the other in Vienna, cumulating nearly five hundred works.
Still Picasso? Yes, but in addition to one does not weary oneself any,
the two fixings are very targeted. That of Venice, in Palazzo Grassi,
is organized by Jean-Louis Andral, the conservative of the Museum of
Antibes. It treats period which Picasso spent over there, of 1945 to
1948, and the title of a table carried out begins again then, the Joy
in life. That of Vienna is due to Werner Spies, who knew to him also
Picasso. First exhibition devoted to the painter in Austria, it is
entirely dedicated to the very last period, since its installation with
Mougins in 1961 until its death, in 1973. One could subtitle it
“Our-Lady-of-Life”, of the name of his villa, so much the urgency of
his end makes the artist exuberant.
Picasso is thus made that the mate, that it hates, must be fought by
painting. Death however moves away in France released from 1944, date
on which Picasso adheres to the Communist Party. But not for him, which
paints Massacre, almost during in Guernica, renamed since the Mass
grave. Not for its compatriots, T it thinks, which far from being
released undergo the yoke of Francoism. Not for the Third World, where,
both in Korea and in the colonies, violences multiply. And then, it
largely exceeded about sixty…
When he meets Francoise Gilot. She is 21 years old. With it, it escapes
from
Gulf-Juan. It is on the beach that finds them Michel Sima, a young
sculptor and photographer, carrying a proposal: the conservative of the
Museum of Antibes would like to meet them. He has name Romuald Dor of
Souchère, hopes for well a small donation for his museum, and
has a flash of genius: on August 8, 1946, it proposes in Picasso,
broken down workshop in the South, to lend its buildings to him. “It is
thus, wrote it, which Picasso was seized by the castle of Antibes, like
Mr. Trouhadec by the vice!”
In a few months, faunas horned and jokers,
the satyrs, the nymphs return in the tables. The Joy in life is a quiet
orgy, the evocation of Arcadie happy, where a dancer with the sumptuous
chest celebrates one does not know which spring. Picasso painted in the
urgency. In the fate testifies to the unhappy
Vandenberg general, whose portrait, works of a painter now forgotten,
who trailed in the reserves, was covered by an Eater with sea urchins.
At the same time, it discovers ceramics with Vallauris, of seizes, of
plays with a confusing speed, finds the gestures and the inventiveness
of the ancient potters, then exceeds them.
This ode with youth returns then punctually in its work. One made him
the public reproach in 1953 of it, when in “one” of the communist
newspaper the French Letters a portrait of Stalin appears that Picasso
wanted youthful. Aragon, drowned under the protests, will make its
self-criticism. Picasso does not appreciate, as it entrusted to Pierre
Daix: “I thought of a very naked hero… Yes, but and its virility? You
make him a Greek zizi, one is annoyed: “That, for the father of the
people? Thus let us go! If small!” Then you treats it with the
attributes of Minotaure: “But see it to you in obsessed, as a satyr!
Hide that, it is me feeling reluctant!” And if you calculate the happy
medium, like you and me, what you take! Say to me, socialist realism,
it should be Stalin who bandages, not? Then there, you hear them howl:
“But camarade, what you make morals and decency Communists! You saw
people embracing themselves in a Soviet painting”?”
At 70, Picasso meets new a MUSE, Jacqueline
Roque. And it set out again, as the exposure of Vienna shows it. This
one rests on an injustice, which Werner Spies wished to repair. The
Picasso last were indeed qualified by Douglas Cooper, which was however
his friend, of “incoherent smearings of an old man obsessed in the
anteroom of death”. In addition to the precision of the feature of its
drawings and engravings exposed in Vienna makes part of the charge of
smearing, Spies holds on the contrary the tables of obsessed for a
manifestation of the life. Admittedly, they are dispatched
hardly. But Picasso himself had said what it thought. In Pierre Daix,
always: “They would always like that you them books a
painting out of evening dress. Drill plate, tie, and all and all. Why
not the Legion of honor?” The “legion of honor”, smiles a specialist in
work, “thus Picasso indicated the asshole”. And it is true that
into some features, the anus is transformed into
rivet washer. That an end of folded paperboard, then entrusted to a
sheet-iron merchant, becomes sculpture. That the Crommelynck husbands
spend their nights in their kitchen to take the prints from engravings
that Picasso incised in the course of the day. That the formats of the
tables increase, as painting is released, that the joy always remains.
Admittedly, Picasso dies, like everyone. But he died upright.
H a r r y
B e l l e