Picasso a sweetie not a sadist--in 3D

Picasso had a sadistic streak and that was not his only less than admirable trait. There is plenty of evidence of this in his painting as well as his biography. But when he set to work in three dimensions the results are never harsh or painful. These works are heart lifting; joyful.  I smiled a lot as I walked around the big show of his sculpture now at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. There are models of monumental outdoor works; portraits including one of his muse mistress Marie-Therese Walter that is now subject to legal wrangling about its rightful owner; there are birds, monkeys, goats and glorified stick figure on a beach that are filled with the pleasures of being alive.

You can't help feeling that he when he put down his paint brush and picked up sheets of metal; plaster and wire or bits of old machinery he left his demons behind, temporarily.   But, I suppose, he also sailed away from tenderness and passion--the qualities that make his Vollard Suite etchings a great maybe the greatest visual love poem.

Faun uncovering a sleeping woman   from the Vollard Suite

This show is fun, an adventure and more evidence that his celebrity is not built on hype. See it before it closes on Sunday February 7.

Stitching up India

This is part of a panel from a room-sized hand-appliqued wall covering. You can see in its middle a flap that, like a curtain or a blind, which lifts up to reveal what is outside. It currently covers the four walls of a room at the Victoria & Albert Museum, part of its large, exciting,colorful, surprising and informative exhibition, "The Fabric of India," --the first such show of its kind.
      Everything was made by hand--whether for temples, festivals, home decoration, courtiers or kings or I should say Sultans and Maharajahs. It is never dull--well except for the saris which while sometimes made of lovely fabric look so boring on the lifeless mannequins. (With the exception of wizards like those responsible for the Alexander McQueen exhibitions, it usually takes warm bodies to make clothes interesting.
     There is politics and its side kick economics too. India did a thriving global trade in fabrics until the mills of Manchester put many of the hand weavers and embroiders of India out of work. Gandhi took up their cause. Spinning and wearing hand- woven cloth became part of his political program. The role of fabrics in India's fight for independence is a small but gripping part of this exhibition. It is welcome, too, that dumb luck has a small role.  .
   The wall hanging shown above was found one evening in 1994 by a fellow strolling down the street in New York. Back in the days before eBay people in New York routinely through stuff out onto the streets when their apartments became too cluttered. Few had access to attics and basement so turfing out was normal. A lot of what was tossed really was trash but quite a bit only seemed like junk to the disposer. We are lucky that this man passed by before the garbage trucks; that now we can see this terrific hanging on display==and a great deal more that was made by hand==spun, woven,embroidered, dyed and painted by men and women in India. The shop has covetable examples of the work they are doing today. Temptation there is, and I fell.