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JUNE 27/29, 2014
■ July 2014
■ Covering the Arts throughout the Philadelphia Region
Picasso prints on display at art museum By BURT WASSERMAN For 21st Century Media
t this time, the highly regarded creative drive of Pablo Picasso comes clearly into focus in a show of some 60 of his best-known graphic prints. They are on display in the Muriel and Philip Berman Gallery of the land-mark building of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, on Fairmount, at 26th St. and Ben Franklin Parkway in center city. The highly imaginative forms quiver with a rare degree of drama, mystery and emotional eloquence that only an incomparable genius could give to his language of vision. Without question, the total offering is a phenomenal gift of artistic brilliance for the inspired delectation of visitors to the exhibition. Titled “Picasso Prints: Myths, Minotaurs and Muses,” the show includes many compositions that deal with themes drawn from ancient art forms, historic mythology, and various time-honored literary sources. After achieving recognition as an artist during the early 20th century in France, Picasso had occasion to become profoundly awe-struck by artworks he discovered on
trips to the Louvre Museum in Paris. He also came to be very taken with various antiquities he saw on visits to the site of several historic ruins at Naples and Pompeii in Italy. Later, in excavations at the Palace of Knossus, from the civilization of ancient Crete, he became familiar with the lore of the Minotaur, the mythic bull who was the presumed inhabitant of a labyrinth located beneath the palace, and whom he adopted as an alter-ego figure in many of his graphic artworks. For example, intaglio prints from the Vollard Suite, included in the current show, present the minotaur as a creature who is half man and half beast, capable of heroic creativity, erotic vigor and violent cruelty. At the time he did these works, he was in the early prime of his life, had lived through the period of World War I, had been married and also been intimate with many lovers, fathered several children and was widely regarded as one of the world’s greatest creative artists. There are also etchings in the exhibition from two literary-illustration projects: Aristophane’s play Lysistrata and Ovid’s poetic masterpiece: Metamorphoses. The former dealt with the notion of women withholding sexual favor from
men in order to tempt them to withdraw from engaging in warfare. The latter is an epic poem in which the years from the creation of the world to the death of Julius Caeaser are treated in a series of recurring episodes involving love in various forms. Together, they demonstrate Picasso’s fascination with subjects taken from classical culture. The entire exhibition is scheduled to remain on public view at the museum, until Aug. 3, 2014. One of Picasso’s best known prints, the Minotauromachia, which means Minotaur Fight, is also on view. It depicts a strange and ambiguous setting in which a creature — half man and half animal — confronts a young girl holding a lit candle and a bouquet of flowers. The overall scene grabs your attention with magnetic intensity while you ponder its potential range of meanings and associations. Additional details in the surrealistically, eerie composition include a horse, a dead female matador, a bearded, semi-nude man on a ladder, two women framed by a dark window above the young girl and a pair of doves perched on the sill of the window. Overall, the mood is tragic Please see PICASSO on 16
Woman with a Tambourine, 1939. Pablo Ruiz y Picasso, Spanish, 1881 - 1973. Aquatint, etching, and scraping (fifth state of five), Plate: 26 1/4 x 20 1/8 inches (66.7 x 51.1 cm), Sheet: 30 1/4 x 22 3/8 inches (76.8 x 56.8 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art © Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York