Picasso, 1932, Erotic Year

National Museum Picasso, Paris, until February 21st, 2018

Picasso, nu au fauteuil noir, 1932 (photo credits: Sylvie Roman)

1932, an erotic year… or just mentioned eroticism?
Organized in partnership with the Tate Modern London, this exhibition is the first high retrospective built in linear and chronological ways, showing a year of establishment, 1932, particularly rich in explorations, inventions, openings to new horizons.
From a room to another, the traveler is invited to live month after month (each of the theaters s’égrène from January to December 1932) the creative Journal of the celebrated artist. By the way, Picasso didn’t write that “the work that we accomplish is a way to keep our own Journal”? This evidence by Picasso was already palpable during his exhibition about Olga, presented, last spring in the same place, or the older one (2007) on the circus at the Gianadda Foundation in Martigny, Switzerland.

Picasso, naked woman in a red sofa, 1932 (photo credits: Sylvie Roman)

This year is defined by a series, from January to March, where the artist creates, in a way frantic, portraits more or less naked of her late companion, Maria Teresa Walter. In front of the mirror, on the beach, in the Sun, in a chair Red or black, the body is deconstructed, distorted, seen on all angles at a time, as a desire, a desire to have this woman fully and so total “everywhere,” dream of many lovers. colors Slam also, in a rediscovery of the hue Frank and net, after passages more dull or monochromatic prior year.

Picasso, naked in front of the mirror, 1932 / View of the gallery (photo credits: Sylvie Roman)

Erotic, sensationalist title?
However “1932, erotic year”, the title exposure reference assumed to a title Serge Gainsbourg, leaves waiting, frustrated, if not disappointed. works hung are a precautionary infinite, a within here, a penis here, butt, or, a hug well wise … especially when we recalls drawings, studies, inks, Wash that Pablo Picasso realized throughout his life, returning constantly, motto of its inception in its inception, the mystery of two or more, body assemble and mingle. it’s good to why the master Franco-Spanish we had used, in other collections, in other tables, in other Expos (Foundation Gianadda, Martigny, Switzerland)…

Is that there the choice of the Commissioner, to leave our eyes free from any image more explicit?
Certainly commissioners today, reviews, see finally and admit, it was more than time, the load erotic and more qu’évidente of certain paintings. anyway, do so far, release Supreme a small child, should then collapse all to “penis, buttocks, anus, tits,” but However, fun and ridiculous taboos, be afraid to appoint the vulva of a woman by name, or organs and drawn. it is of parts of the female body that one is, but that we n’ose name.

Picasso, the Dream, 1932 / the Lecture, 1932 (photo credits: Sylvie Roman)

On 1932, certainly the retrospective at his gallery (see below) made great noise, each one noting Picasso’s inventiveness, transgression, his subversive or provocative side… However, that was noted, already 1932, a certain sense of monotony and repetition on the Picasso’s creation and that’s strangely the same feeling emerging from this exhibition at the Picasso National Museum, almost 90 years later.
Those series have the interest of their default, that overly to see, we get bored of them!
The repetitive colors of almond green, canary yellow, bright carmine red, parma, as well as shapes that fill out like tears, in unlikely curls, suggesting abandonment of bodies. Its sensuality, its imperceptible movement in dormancy or dream (given in waiting), or after the love embrace, when jolts still animate stomaches, chests, eyelids, mouthes in the memory of the enjoyment, are from the month of March, a little “déjà vu” and the “spectator-voyeur” rather expects evolution or another transgression.

All the more so since the calls for exploration initiated by Henri Matisse are that much explicit in the canvas here exposed: winks to his senior, hidden admiration, or a reusing of a sign to take over it?

1932, recognition and “museification”
It was still a pivotal year in the artist life, marked by a number of major facts that make the painter switch towards a new dimension, and will leave also a permanent trace in his relation to creation. The Georges Petit gallery, in Paris, organized a large retrospective, rich of more 230 artworks, some of which created for those circumstances.

Picasso, the Sleeper at the Mirror, 1932 / the Young Girl with the Mandoline, 1932 (photo credits: Sylvie Roman)

An international recognition also, with an exhibition in the Zurich Kunsthaus, the first since 1911.
Later this year is also marked by a reasoned catalog on the work of Pablo Picasso, published by Christian Zervos. Maybe this was here the true main reason and the most appropriate heading for a worth exhibition to admire, but that doesn’t revolutionize for all that our discovery or re-discovery of Picasso’s Artwork…