Dice, a yellow packet of cigarettes and a visiting card with the corner turned up-these were the ordinary items captured in a collage by Pablo Picasso in 1914 that inspired an entire exhibit on the Cubist master's work and artistic influences.
"Picasso and the Allure of Language," which opened at the Nasher Museum of Art last Thursday, showcases both Picasso's artwork and his writing in order to portray his intellectual development. It will be on display until Jan. 3, 2010. A Picasso panel discussion was held Thursday night at the Nasher with the exhibition's curator Susan Fisher, who is the Horace W. Goldsmith associate curator of modern and contemporary art at the Yale University Art Gallery.
"In a broader sense, ["Picasso and the Allure of Language"] is interested in how language helped reshape Picasso's imagination," Fisher said. The lecture, which featured Fisher and Patricia Leighten, a professor of art, art history and visual studies at Duke, brought a full audience to the Nasher auditorium.
"I thought [the panel] was a really interesting way to introduce myself both to the museum and Picasso," Nari Ely, a sophomore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said. "It talked a lot more about his life and the inspirations behind his paintings that I'm not necessarily going to know about from going to a museum."
The Yale University Art Gallery lent to the Nasher all of the works on display, except for a few sculptures. The collage entitled "Dice, packet of cigarettes and visiting card," which is physically the smallest piece on display, originally hung in a Yale office until Fisher and Leighten came across it.
To Fisher, the piece embodies the spirit of the show in that it represents the sense of communication and connection Picasso had with writers. Not only were intellectuals Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas the two friends that had left Picasso the visiting card in the first place, but Stein and her brother Leo were also among Picasso's first patrons.
Along with describing the backgrounds of several of Picasso's works, the panel discussed the artist's support for "revolutionary modernism" and anything innovative.
"He wanted to shock people into seeing things freshly," Leighten said.
Fisher also noted that despite Picasso and his intellectual peers wanting to break away from "primitive," realist techniques, a part of the exhibit is called "revisions" in order to highlight the number of works Picasso did that incorporated the past by building upon previously existing pieces.
"Cubism is very visually confusing. It's purposefully confusing because he's combining different viewpoints of objects," Leighten said. "You might think you're looking at something that's irrational. And you're right."
Fisher added that regardless of how long an individual has been exposed to Cubism, Cubist art can still be a challenge to understand.
Leighten said this highlights how Cubism is essentially a rejection of a "communal view" in favor of the artist's individual viewpoint, as seen in Picasso's memory paintings. By looking at the influences such theories had on his artwork and writing, Fisher said her overall goal for the exhibit is to have individuals approach Picasso from a different angle.
"I was in Paris this summer and visited the Picasso museum and grew to appreciate his artwork," senior Mary Bohan said. "This discussion explored new perspectives on the deeper meanings of his works as well as his relationships with friends and patrons."
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