Picasso Morass at the Whitney

Aspiring artists sometimes attempt to copy a painting that is on display in a museum’s gallery: It’s a useful, hands-on approach to learning about the masters and their techniques. But the knock-off is never a great work in its own right: It’s a step on the path to developing one’s own style and vision.
I thought of this as I wondered about the many derivative, lesser works that litter the Whitney Museum’s show of “Picasso and American Art,” which opens to the public today. A show with such a large lackluster component takes a big gamble that its academic interest will be enough to keep the visitor engaged. For me, that gamble did not pay off.
Guest curated by Picasso scholar Michael FitzGerald, the enterprise’s doggedly slogging research, unearthing every conceivable link between selected American artists and the 20th-century artworld’s most demanding and confounding father figure, would make a better scholarly thesis than a riveting exhibition or a stimulating exhibition catalogue. FitzGerald is an associate professor at Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., with scant prior experience at the helm of major museum shows.
My first reaction, in the initial galleries, was that this exhibition could have been subtitled, “Picasso Eats His Young.” Killer works by Picasso (themselves compelling enough reason to attend this show) devour the neighboring works by lesser American contenders whom he had in thrall. It seemed as though Picasso, who never actually set foot in this country, had nevertheless squashed every American artist in his path.
Then, as I continued through the show, I realized that the contest was rigged: Like the artists who copy paintings in museum galleries, the more illustrious creators of these Picasso knock-offs were on a journey towards developing their own unique, mature styles. Those styles had little to do with their atypical oeuvre in this Picasso-centric show.
Another problem was the choice of artists: Max Weber (important for introducing Picasso’s work to America) and John Graham don’t stand up as worthy heirs to Picasso’s genius. And I think FitzGerald picked the wrong Pop artists to point up Picasso’s enduring influence. While Rauschenberg may not have consciously “copied” Picasso, as did FitzGerald’s Pop picks, I think he embodies more of the master’s spirit: his use of collages, intriguing textures and broken-up forms, as well as in his voracious absorption and reinvention of disparate media and materials.
The only artist in the show who really holds his ground against Picasso, while playing the master’s own game, is David Smith. In the show’s heavyweight match-up between large sculptures by the two masters (Picasso’s “Head of a Woman” and Smith’s “The Hero”), Smith scores a knock-out.
In his catalogue forward, Whitney director Adam Weinberg states:
“Picasso and American Art” is indeed one of the most ambitious and long-term [ten years in the making] undertakings in the Whitney’s history; it is also one of the most costly.
Would that such resources had been better spent.