Spanish artist Pablo Picasso is widely recognized for pioneering the Cubist movement through his art. But in addition to being a painter, Picasso also was passionate about the written word and counted writers, poets and scholars among his closest friends.
A new exhibition at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke showcases Picasso's deep and multidimensional interest in writing and language.
"Picasso and the Allure of Language" includes 60 works in a variety of media by Picasso, as well as pieces by fellow artist Georges Braque and photographs, letters, manuscripts and book projects by a diverse group of artists and writers. The Nasher Museum is the second and final venue for the traveling exhibition, which opens Thursday, Aug. 20, and runs through Sunday, Jan. 3, 2010. The exhibition was organized by the Yale University Art Gallery, its first venue, with support from the Nasher Museum.
"Picasso and the Allure of Language" focuses on the artist's life after moving from his native Spain to the bohemian Montmartre section of Paris in 1904. There, he formed friendships with important French writers and poets including Max Jacob, Pierre Reverdy and Guillaume Apollinaire. In 1905, Picasso met Gertrude Stein, the expatriate American writer who, guided in art collecting by her brother Leo, became the artist's principal patron in Paris until 1914. Works Picasso created for the Steins are included in the exhibition.
"Letters and words are woven through the fabric of Pablo Picasso's art," says exhibition curator Susan Greenberg Fisher, the Horace W. Goldsmith Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Yale University Art Gallery. "When Picasso's work is seen through the lens of language, letters and unformed words seem to appear in even the most familiar of paintings, to inflect them or to give them new meaning. Language exerts a strong gravitational pull, an allure, away from the subjects of Picasso's art: the animals and things, and also the wives and mistresses that are often the focus of studies on the artist."
A variety of events including a poetry night, panel discussions, a film series and teacher workshops will accompany the exhibition. The Carolina Ballet will present a newly choreographed ballet, "Picasso."
A smaller installation inspired by Picasso's own collection, examines his practice of collecting African art from artistic, social and political viewpoints. The "Africa and Picasso" installation includes more than 100 African figures, masks and musical instruments and features objects from the Nasher Museum's permanent collection that are similar in type and origin to those Picasso collected.
"Picasso and the Allure of Language" is drawn from the collections of the Yale University Art Gallery and Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, as well as the Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection in Dallas, Texas.
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, co-published by the Yale University Art Gallery and Yale University Press ($40, paperback). It includes entries that present new scholarship on objects from the exhibition by Patricia Leighten, professor of Art, Art History & Visual Studies at Duke.
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Exhibition: "Picasso and the Allure of Language" Thursday, Aug. 20, 2009 through Sunday, Jan. 3, 2010 Tickets are required. Free for Duke students; $5 for Duke faculty and staff; $10 for non-Duke adults; $5 for children 7-17; free for children 6 and under; free for museum members. For tickets, call the Duke University Box Office at 660-1701. Information: nasher.duke.edu/picasso.