This is the most publicized exhibition of the coming weeks: Picasso & Abstraction is set up until February 12 at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. In collaboration with the Musée national Picasso-Paris, the Brussels institution is showing 140 works exploring the relationship between the artist (1881-1973) and abstraction. Ambiguous reports…
This is the most publicized exhibition of the coming weeks: Picasso & Abstraction is set up until February 12 at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. In collaboration with the Musée national Picasso-Paris, the Brussels institution is showing 140 works exploring the relationship between the artist (1881-1973) and abstraction. Ambiguous and complex relationships, nourished by distrust as well as fascination and lavished here with a certain pedagogy. In the corridor leading to the exhibition, half a dozen “alcoves” offer, for example, the art of collage to young and old children. Next, a strange split/cracked pane serves to abstract the objects placed behind it. And then comes this guitar that has become a shattered object, balanced between several worlds. An approach well in line with the canvases which, chronologically placed, weave a curious, disturbed, explorer world. It would be wrong to say that each piece is brilliant (the plasticity of some is questionable or even outdated) but Picasso’s absolutism perfectly nourishes this questioning of the meaning of representation. Throughout the rooms, we are in turn absorbed, worried, charmed, angry. The exhibition even has the apt idea of displaying the artist’s original creations and authentic sculptures from sub-Saharan Africa side by side. Guess who influenced the other? From this generous exhibition, we come out anyway with questions, which is a good sign. Note that the event is also accompanied by conferences-meetings. This November 26, we will talk about Picasso’s relationship with women, and on December 11, the practices of appropriation by the Spaniard of the creations of others.
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