![\"Image](\"http:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/picasso_buste.jpg\")
\nImage credit: \u00a9 P.A.R. Photo by Marc Domage<\/p>\n
\nImage credit: \u00a9 P.A.R. Photo by Marc Domage<\/p>\n
Picasso may be one of the 20th century\u2019s most influential artists, but the jury is still out on the value of his late works. \u2018Mosqueteros,\u2019 an exhibition of nearly one hundred paintings and etchings at Chelsea\u2019s Gagosian Gallery is the first major U.S. effort since a 1984 Guggenheim show to change the prevailing perception that the late master had lost his touch by the time of his death at age 91 in 1973.<\/p>\n
In a great blast of energy, Picasso spent the final years of his life creating hundreds of paintings after canonical works by Velasquez, Goya, Delacroix and other old masters. Adapting images of soldiers, prostitutes and performers to his trademark, fragmented and twisted style, Picasso seemed to be grappling with his own position in art history. At the same time, the works\u2019 title, \u2018Mosqueteros,\u2019 or musketeers, referred to the non-paying rabble at the theater and hinted at the artist\u2019s status as an onlooker as contemporary art rejected abstraction.<\/p>\n
Response to the Guggenheim show was underwhelming. New York Times critic Michael Brenson praised Picasso\u2019s energy more than the work itself, while the less gracious Robert Hughes opined that the work showed only fragments of Picasso\u2019s talent.<\/p>\n
So why try to change the record now? John Richardson, curator of this show and Picasso\u2019s biographer, says he\u2019s \u2018avenging\u2019 Picasso of the poor response to his work; more interesting to a contemporary art audience, he also explains that he intends the artist to, \u201c\u2026look like a brand new painter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Portraits like Buste (1970), a character whose feline face is created with pools of dark paint punctuated by a phallic or key-like orange monocle, immediately make the case for Picasso as a forerunner (albeit distant and far more dignified) to young, expressionist-inspired artists like Jonathan Meese and Andre Butzer. Though the character\u2019s terrible, black-eyed gaze ties him to Picasso\u2019s other harrowing portraits, Picasso eschews the sketchy outlines he uses in many of the show\u2019s other works, and composes using blocks of color in a style that enhances the mystery of his shadowy personality.<\/p>\n
In 1984, Hughes noted the speed with which Picasso painted, and condemned the artist for making his painting process more important than the final product. Nowadays, that\u2019s accepted practice in any media, from Josh Smith\u2019s paintings, to Fia Backstrom\u2019s performance\/installation work to Walead Beshty\u2019s photography and sculpture.<\/p>\n
Picasso\u2019s late paintings aren\u2019t likely to be direct precedent for any of these artists. But given the popularity of mining 20th century avant-garde art history (think camera-less photography, constructivism, 60s and 70s performance), it\u2019s fascinating to see evidence of the reverse process \u2013 a canonical artist who seems to have deliberately pointed several ways forward. As evidence that he was a wellspring of ideas until the end, this exhibition will doubtless have the legacy-effecting impact it deserves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Image credit: \u00a9 P.A.R. Photo by Marc Domage Picasso may be one of the 20th century\u2019s most influential artists, but the jury is still out on the value of his late works. \u2018Mosqueteros,\u2019 an exhibition of nearly one hundred paintings and etchings at Chelsea\u2019s Gagosian Gallery is the first major U.S. effort since a 1984 … <\/p>\n