Picasso in The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,History & Criticism
Picasso in The Metropolitan Museum of Art Details
About the Author Gary Tinterow is Engelhard Chairman of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Read more
Reviews
Whatever the numerous criticisms on this current show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC (the almost total absence of Cubist works, a depression-time exhibit with no loans from other museums, a diminutive collection when compared to the unsurpassed holdings of nearby MOMA...) this is a beautiful exhibition and the book that accompanies it is up to the Met's high standards of quality.About 300 works, the entire Picasso collection of the museum (a good part of it drawings and prints), are studied here, with a strong emphasis on pre-cubist works (a seldom-seen blue-period erotic work that Picasso once disavowed, icons such as the Gertrude Stein portrait, or the famous "Au Lapin Agile" donated by the late Walter Annenberg)and two good 1932 portraits of Marie-Thérèse. The main asset of the book, apart from the excellent reproductions, is the quality of the essays which reveal new scholarship on the artist, such as the discovery of hidden paintings behind the actual extant works (Picasso, in his early years would commonly paint over existing works, by himself or other artist friends, in order to save on the money needed to buy new canvases).A very interesting book which I recommend to anyone interested in the most famous painter of the XXth century.
