{"id":78315,"date":"2025-05-06T05:19:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-06T05:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/78315\/"},"modified":"2025-05-06T05:19:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-06T05:19:09","slug":"m-throws-everything-at-the-wall-for-picasso-in-asia-exhibition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/78315\/","title":{"rendered":"M+ Throws Everything at the Wall for \u2018Picasso in Asia\u2019 Exhibition"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tJust two years ago, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Picasso<\/a>\u2019s death, dozens of museums across the globe put on shows that took seemingly every angle possible on the artist\u2019s career and legacy. There was Hannah Gadsby\u2019s notoriously maligned \u201cPablo-matic\u201d exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, a grand survey of works on paper at the Centre Pompidou, and a Met show about a Picasso commission that never came to fruition. There was even an entire MoMA show about a single summer in Fontainebleau. But, in the end, none of these shows provided much in the way<\/a> of new insights about Picasso.<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2025, a Picasso show needs to do a lot to appear fresh. That\u2019s something that the curators of \u201cPicasso in Asia\u2014A Conversation,\u201d a new exhibition at Hong Kong\u2019s M+<\/a> museum, seem to understand. The show, by far the most extensive exhibition of Picasso\u2019s work in Asia in decades, features 60 works by the artist, mostly on loan from Mus\u00e9e National Picasso-Paris that are situated alongside around 130 pieces by Asian and Asian diasporic artists drawn from the M+ collection. In the foreword to the exhibition catalogue, Suhanya Raffel and C\u00e9cile Debray, museum director of M+ and president of Mus\u00e9e Picasso, respectively, write that the show offers \u201ca new methodology and a bold narrative\u201d for understanding Picasso. That new methodology is certainly bold, if confusing.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are three curatorial themes in \u201cPicasso in Asia.\u201d The first is that of \u201cArchetypes,\u201d which divides the show into four sections to examine Picasso\u2019s life: the genius, the outsider, the magician and the apprentice. Accompanying wall text throughout the show makes the argument for how Picasso embodied or played with each of these archetypes. The \u201cOutsider\u201d section, for example, features several paintings from the Blue Period to illustrate how he \u201crebelled against artistic traditions\u201d and was \u201cconstantly changing his own artistic language.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThen there is \u201cPicasso in Focus\u201d in which the curators draw out narrower moments or themes from the artist\u2019s biography to link smaller collections of works. One \u201cIn Focus\u201d section shows the evolution of Picasso\u2019s dove of peace\u2014how it was representative of his politics, and how its legacy has changed in Asia. \u201cIn Focus\u201d is also where the curators thread in newer scholarship around Picasso\u2019s treatment of his romantic partners or the marginalization of women artists as solely his \u201cmuses.\u201d (Though it must be said, it\u2019s hard to take such interventions seriously when the concurrent \u201cArchetype\u201d track seems to position Picasso as a near-mythic figure.)<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tAn installation view of the \u201cPicasso in Asia\u2014A Conversation.\u201d In the center are many works from Pleasure of Picasso\u2014Mother and Child by Japanese artist Keiichi Tanaami. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLok Cheng\/Courtesy M+ Museum, Hong Kong<\/p>\n

\n\tRunning alongside these two threads is the \u201cin Asia\u201d part of the show. The works here range from fellow modernists like Isamu Noguchi and Luis Chan to contemporary darlings like Haegue Yang and Jes Fan. These works occasionally illustrate a direct connection to Picasso, either by influencing his work or him influencing theirs. Take the case of Pleasure of Picasso\u2014Mother and Child, a series of over 500 paintings by Japanese artist Keiichi Tanaami painted from the outbreak of Covid until his death last year. The paintings, which playfully modify and reinterpret Picasso\u2019s compositions, were directly inspired by Picasso\u2019s own insistence on artistic production in the face of his mortality. These works, like many of Picasso\u2019s pieces in his later years, exude a childlike simplicity and bold coloration. But there are plenty of cases where the connection between Picasso\u2019s art and that of one of his supposed successors isn\u2019t obvious at all.<\/p>\n

\n\tIf this all sounds both overdetermined and underbaked, that\u2019s because it is. The overlapping curatorial strategies overwhelm each other, making it difficult to understand what, if anything, the curators are trying to say about Picasso as an artist or his relationship to Asia. Is the show arguing that Picasso is the archetypal modern artist from which our understanding of contemporary art and artists spring? Is it saying that our understanding of Picasso\u2019s influence on Asian art is underknown? Or is it merely pointing out some uncanny resonances between Picasso\u2019s work and art made by Asian artists?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the catalogue, Doryun Chong, the artistic director of M+, seems to acknowledge this ambiguity, with an essay that largely argues for each Asian artist\u2019s inclusion in the show. Among the rationales, Chong cites homage (Zeng Fanzhi), tangential connection (Isamu Noguchi), critique (Saori Akutagawa), and \u201cecho\u201d (the self-portraits of the post-Cultural Revolution painters, the \u201cNo Name Group\u201d). But Chong is careful to note, particularly of the Chinese artists, that \u201cthe resemblances and resonances of subject form, and ideas, are not meant to suggest they were influenced by Picasso.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThis halting mishmash of identification and non-identification renders the show disjointed and short-circuits any deep insights. In its place are a variety of juxtapositions of varying degrees of success, and a lot of excellent work from Asian and Asian diaspora artists. Perhaps it\u2019s telling that the most exciting \u201cconversations\u201d are the ones that pair Picasso\u2019s portraits of women with feminist works or those that subvert gender norms.<\/p>\n

In a section called \u201cThe Artist and His Muse,\u201d Picasso\u2019s 1931 painting The Sculptor, depicting a self-satisfied artist gazing upon a sculpted woman\u2019s bust, is placed opposite a series of tender and humorous photographs by New York\u2013based Chinese artist Pixy Liao. The photographs depict Liao as the artist and her male partner as the muse, as they portray figures from pop culture and art history. Liao may not be working in opposition to Picasso, but placed alongside each other, the two works illuminate the absurdity and misogyny embedded in the outdated male artist\/female muse dynamic.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tAn installation view of the \u201cPicasso in Asia\u2014A Conversation.\u201d On the left is Picasso\u2019s Portrait of Dora Maar (1937), while on the right is Nalini Malani\u2019s digital animation Ballad of a Woman (2023).<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLok Cheng\/Courtesy M+ Museum, Hong Kong<\/p>\n

\n\tBy a similar token, there are multiple Picasso\u2019s works in the show in which he depicts himself as a minotaur that seems set to ravish or terrorize Dora Maar or Marie-Th\u00e9r\u00e8se Walter. Those pieces are paired with Saori Akutagawa\u2019s striking paintings from the 1950s that depict women rendered monstrous by their emotions and transformed into figures from Japanese folklore. Akutagawa\u2019s God of Spring (1954), featuring a large serpent-like figure depicted in bold golden lines, is hung so that it looms over the Picasso works, its deity here acting as a clear rejection of his supine women-muses and perhaps a protector of them too. Meanwhile, Picasso\u2019s Portrait of Dora Maar (1937) is paired with Nalini Malani\u2019s digital animation Ballad of a Woman (2023), depicting the afterlife of a murdered woman who finds the world remains unaffected by her killing. Maar stares out from her portrait, looking on as Malani\u2019s tormented figure cleans up her own crime scene and mourns herself.<\/p>\n

\n\tPortions of the show devoted to still lifes or depictions of the body are less successful. The curators here want to highlight resonances or divergences in conceptual strategies or aesthetics, but mostly, the juxtapositions seem random. In one room, Picasso\u2019s wooden sculptures The Bathers (1956) is set up alongside Haegue Yang\u2019s Totem Robots (2010), composed of clothing racks, electrical devices, and other domestic bric-a-brac assembled together. Why are these works similar? Because they attest \u201cto the power of artistic imagination,\u201d according to a wall text. Sure, why not.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe connections may be forced, and the curation is overstuffed. But at least the work that isn\u2019t by Picasso is high-quality, and there\u2019s value in a wide range of museum-goers being exposed to it. Plus, the scale of the show has given M+ the ability to give some of these artists big budgets for new commissions.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn M+\u2019s basement, Lee Mingwei recreates Guernica (1937) in sand, transforming Picasso\u2019s already monumental painting into something unfinished, impermanent, and near architectural in size. A day\u2019s worth of work on the sand painting is left undone. This June, Lee will finish the work, then invite its destruction by having performers sweep it away. Guernica on Sand best captures the impulse of \u201cPicasso in Asia\u201d: it uses the institutional weight of a Picasso show not just to revisit the past, but to make something new from it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just two years ago, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Picasso\u2019s death, dozens of museums across the globe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3939],"tags":[4021,4020,4022,77,34388,38324,38325,18180,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-78315","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-design","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-m","13":"tag-m-museum","14":"tag-pablo-picasso","15":"tag-picasso","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114459204949784029","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}