A DOUBLE DOSE OF PICASSO'S PERSONAL COLLECTIONS

Nu couche (1932)

Picasso is sometimes accused of being too prolific, dashing off paintings and other artworks as if there were no tomorrow; then living to the ripe old age of 91. Because of this there are now an estimated 20,000 separate paintings, sculptures, and other artworks by Picasso. The current value of all these items is inestimable, but would clearly outweigh the GDP of several Third World countries.

Thanks to this prolificness, we now have two major Picasso exhibitions in Tokyo to choose from.

Interestingly, both exhibitions derive from works that Picasso kept in his own personal collection until his death in 1973, when the works were divided between family members and the French state. Accordingly, the works on display at the Sompo Japan Museum of Art come from the collection of his widow, Jacqueline Roque, while those on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (MCAT), are from the Musée Picasso, Paris, the museum founded with the works of art the French government received from Picasso's estate in lieu of death taxes. Having these two exhibitions in Tokyo at the same time, therefore, almost represents a reunion of the artist's personal collection.

Le Baiser (1929)

The exhibition at MCAT concentrates on Picasso's so-called Surrealist period (1925 - 1937), when the artist was reputedly influenced by the Paris-based Surrealist movement that was then stealing all the artistic headlines. The exhibition at Sompo Japan lacks this chronological focus, but allows the visitor to consider Picasso's various styles over several decades, from the 1920s to paintings done the year before his death.

Despite their differences, the two exhibitions have rather similar titles --- Picasso: la metamorphose de la forme at Sompo Japan vs. Picasso - Metamorphoses: forme et erotisme at MCAT --- signalling what many regard as the essence of Picasso's art, his obsession with form and transmutation.

Picasso's acknowledged greatness as a ground-breaking artist dates from his Cubist period, before World War I, when, in company with Georges Braque, he applied radical new perspectives to the painting of objects, people, and landscapes. Although these works struck out in a completely new direction, they often lacked the warmth, colour, and human interest of his later works. Although neither exhibition includes paintings from this period, Picasso's later art continued to be flavored by Cubism until his death.

The artistic acclaim that his experiments with Cubism won, also gave him the confidence to paint with greater freedom and expression in his subsequent works, as he reduced his subjects to increasingly playful, poetic, and abstract shapes, such as Le Baiser (1929) at Sompo Japan, a painting reminiscent of a Henry Moore sculpture. In this work, Picasso reduces the act between the lovers to its purist essence.

Perhaps the best example of his skill in transmuting subjects into telling geometric shapes are the series of graphite sketches, Une anatomie: trois femmes, at MCAT, that he drew for the Surrealist magazine, Minotaure, in 1933. Although the 'women' in these sketches are reduced to assemblages of abstract geometric shapes, each one seems to retain a unique character, suggesting real individuals.

Although excellent visual jokes, feminists will probably see these as misogynist, as there is no denying that Picasso had very strong views with regard to women that can either be seen in a positive or a negative light. The more heavy-handed humor of Tete de femme (1931), a sculpture at MCAT, might also give offence. Reputedly a depiction of his lover, Marie-Therese Walter, the eyes and nose of this bronze head are clearly stylized into a penis and testicles, effectively equating the head of a woman with the private parts of a man, in this case, undoubtedly Picasso's own.

Tete de femme (1931)

During his life, Picasso's art was often labelled "pornographic," especially the paintings he did in the years before his death, when the torrent of paintings he produced were dismissed as the pornographic fantasies of an impotent, old man, with one time admirer and biographer, Douglas Cooper, denouncing them as "the incoherent scribblings of a frenetic old man in the antechamber of death."

Although there is much truth in these criticisms, as we can see in some of the more slapdash works at the Sompo, it is also remarkable that a man of 90 was painting with such fervour and apparent passion for the joys of life. While Picasso's obsession with the female form often drew fire from feminists and the more puritanical of his critics, his eroticism was also a major factor in his mastery of form.

Paintings of human subjects should retain a certain distance between the artist and the subject, as this greatly simplifies problems of form and balance. The human shape has a natural harmony viewed from a distance. But, for Picasso, whose subjects were more often than not his lovers, this distance is seldom held. Instead, in works like Nu couche (1932), he rushes towards the subject --- once again his lover, Marie-Therese Walter --- filling the canvas with her voluminous curves, showing both her front and rear.

This attempt to transfer his intimate, erotic, tactile and multifaceted sense of her onto a two-dimensional canvas created major challenges with regard to form, prompting Picasso to create new and powerful visual harmonies, creating a work that, for Picasso, was truer than any photographic portrait.

Although the truth that Picasso constantly sought in his paintings was driven by adult desire, paradoxically he could only reach it by mastering and relearning the artistic processes of childhood, as children depict their impressions of people and things vividly, directly, and honestly, unmediated by conventions of form. Picasso, himself, once admitted as much when, after visiting an exhibition of children's art, he said:

"When I was their age I could draw like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like them."

Sex, in Freudian terms, is sometimes regarded as an "innocent" attempt by adults to regain the lost intimacies of childhood. Through the powerful eroticism of his art, Picasso was often able to achieve such childlike intimacy with his subjects not only in the bedroom but also on the canvas.

Alternative version of Nu couche (1932)