Sunday, November 8, 2015

Moma for 60 years of Picasso sculptures

I was able to meet up with my son and my sisters at the MoMA and catch a very wonderful  and whimsical Picasso sculpture exhibition. The sculpture was divided by rooms into epochs, because Picasso, trained as a painter, only dabbled in the arena of sculpture at various times of his life. Each of his episodic and exhaustive investigations into sculpture was inspired by a different material and the relationships in his life. He worked in classical clay and bronze, etching into stone, building with plaster and found objects, transforming thrown clay vessels, hammering pieces of found wood, and towards the end of his life, playing with the properties of a new material- sheet metal. Many of the sculptures decorated his houses and were made for him to live with. They were not shown or distributed to the public venues until after his death. Picasso as an artist was very playful and that was captured in this show. You could see the smiles on the museum visitor's faces.
Love the shovel body and spigot head
my sister and my son
 I didn't take a lot of pictures. We were busy looking and talking.

reminding me of Minoan sculptures, and the shores of Greece

these are beach pebbles Picasso etched classical faces into

Simplicity in the whole thing..ear and all.
If I could own any one of the works- I'd take this drawing

or this one.

Venus of the gas fire
During WW2 when the Nazis took Paris and Picasso refused to leave, he was denounced as degenerate and basically a prisoner on his own house. He secretly sculpted with clay in the bathroom, and at night smuggled small pieces to a foundry at the edge of town. Making bronze work was an act of defiance, a brave act. This small sculpture is actually an upturned, (and otherwise unaltered), gas pilot from his stove. Picasso, before Duchamp, turns a ready-made into art.

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