June 18, 2023
Thanks to Culture Pass the Gazette got a free look at the Brooklyn Museum‘s new Picasso exhibit called “It’s Pablo-matic: Picasso According to Hannah Gadsby“ And with all the discussion this year about AI chatbots and visual prompts we thought it would be about some new tech that dices, slices, and cubes shapes, forms and colors like a virtual Pablo Picasso might do.
It’s been half a Century since he left us all to somehow carry on without him pumping out copious volumes of paintings, drawings and sculptures, and because he created so much art in his lifetime, discussions will probably continue just about for ever. It turns out we were 100% wrong in expecting a Picasso-bot showcase. Rather, it was an examination of his ‘oove from a feminist perspective. The title, It’s Pablomatic is a punny riff on It’s Problematic, which we guess is how one might gently introduce a slightly critical pov about Pablo Picasso.
Challenging Sacred Cows is a dangerous game and this show was no different. Picasso’s standing as one of the, if not the, greatest artists of the last Century suggests one ought to probably tread gently with the critique. But what is art even for if not to challenge those kind of assumptions, right? We don’t know.
This exhibit includes Picasso’s own work and that of others, specifically that of Women artists who have usually not gotten the recognition their work merits. The curator, Australian comic Hannah Gadsby, draws our attention to the Guerrilla Girls efforts to right these wrongs: most of the art on the walls in any given museum was created by Men; most of the Women subjects are passive, objects lacking agency, and often simply naked and captured under a male artist’s gaze; the price of one Jasper Johns painting is enough to buy one or more works from dozens of female and or POC artists listed on a poster, relative selling prices by gender, and so on. The Injustice is undeniable.
Where the exhibit gets in the weeds is when it ties the overarching themes of Patriarchy and misogyny with this one artist’s work and character. Picasso was arguably one of a kind. He was so prolific, he took inspiration from so many things, he worked with so many media, and had so many different ‘periods’ etc, that it’s not easy to categorize him. And if he represents the bias in the Art World toward male artists, that will always just be one more thing you can say about him.
He had an exhibit of just guitar themed works awhile back at MOMA. He was a giant who used whatever materials were at hand to express whatever happened to be on his mind at the moment, and he returned to certain themes and motifs time and again. We can see that in this show – the Minotaurs, the sleepy woman, phallic symbols, bulls…
Is it ironic that the Nazis damned Picasso’s art as degenerate and put Leni Riefenstahl’s on the pedestal? Have we come full circle now with banned library books and cancelled history courses of 21C America? While Pablomatic stops far short of condemning, let alone cancelling, Picasso, it does ask us to at least consider elements of misogyny in his work, personal life, in the Art World at large, and to think about the concept of artistic genius generally. Fair enough. We should consider those things, and acknowledge that some, maybe even a lot, of what Picasso did in the last Century would land differently today and probably not in a good way. Then again, given the rise of both shock and celebrity ‘culture’ his personal transgressions might have served him even better nowadays.
On the other hand, not knowing a thing about the personal life of a Rembrandt, a Picasso, a Cindy Sherman or a Roman Polanski is a valid way to experience their art. The thing they created – a song, a book, movie, or painting – has to stand on its own two feet. A weak finished product shouldn’t get extra credit because its creator was some kind of saint, and a powerful masterpiece shouldn’t lose any because the person who made it was a horrible person most of the time. A person may have been a thieving druggie and a great artist, or a great humanitarian and a boring writer. This show raises some important points and uses Picasso to illustrate them. We can do better and we should make the effort. This show is a step in the right direction even if it ruffles some feathers. Picasso was a person of his times, and ‘his times’ were those before we had a Woman president in this country. We’re still in those times.
It doesn’t take anything away from his art to say that and it was definitely worth the trip to BK to see this show. Frankly, anything that brings people out to experience art and promotes conversations about our values is great. This show will do both.
…matic.
