Picasso, “Self-Portrait with Palette,” 1906, Philadelphia Museum of Art
© Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
In her rundown last month of upcoming museum exhibitions of note, the Wall Street Journal‘s Candace Jackson highlighted the Metropolitan Museum’s big spring show (which I later referred to in my own WSJ piece) of some 150 Picassos from its own collection—the museum’s complete holdings of his paintings, drawings, sculptures and ceramics, as well as some 50 prints.
Then Candace tantalized us with this come-on:
At least one significant painting in the show has never been seen
before at the Met—and it will likely feature a parental warning.
“Erotic Scene,” a 1903 oil painting from the artist’s “Blue Period,”
features a young Picasso being pleasured by a brunette.
Assuming that this is the same 1903 painting I wrote about for Artnet back in 1996 (scroll down to “Too Hot for the Met?”), “being pleasured” is Wall Street Journal-ese for “receiving fellatio” (which is CultureGrrl-ese for…never mind).
Mine is not a family blog; no “parental warning” is necessary:
In a talk on obscenity and
censorship that I attended more than a decade ago at the Met, the late art
historian/contrarian Robert Rosenblum flashed a slide of that work (then variously titled “Portrait of the Artist Making Love” and “Le Douleur”) and challenged the
museum’s decision not to exhibit it. He called the painting “fascinating” for the artist’s self-depiction “in the pose of Goya‘s “Maja”:
Goya, “The Naked Maja,” 1797-1800, Prado Museum
Picasso expert John Richardson dismissed the 1903 Picasso, in the first volume of his “A Life of Picasso,“ as a “feeble daub.” We’ll soon be able to judge for ourselves.
This show is just one part of what’s turning out to be 2010’s never-ending Picasso fest, probably coming soon to a museum near you. The prolific Pablo is every recession-challenged museum’s surefire crowd pleaser. (But please don’t swoon while you gaze at his work.) We’ve got the Philadelphia Museum of Art mounting Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris, for which it will controversially charge visitors an extra fee ($4 above the already steep $16 general-admission charge) to see an array of nearly 200 works drawn largely from the museum’s own collection. The self-portrait at the top of this post will be the introductory work in that show.
Back in New York, we’ll have the Museum of Modern Art’s show (Mar. 28-Sept 6) of about 100 Picasso prints, which largely overlaps the Met’s presentation (Apr. 27-Aug. 1) and somewhat overlaps Philly’s offering (Feb. 24-Apr. 25).
Don’t you worry, West Coasters. You’ll also get your fair share of Picasso-mania—Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso—about 150 works to be seen at the Seattle Art Museum, Oct. 8 to Jan. 9. It’s part of a global tour occasioned by the Paris museum’s closure for renovations. Michael Upchurch of the Seattle Times reports that the show “likely will go to two more U.S. cities—still to be confirmed—after it leaves Seattle.”