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.
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| 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.
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