BY NINA PELAEZ

In print | Published March 18, 2010

Pablo Picasso has long stood as an emblem of modernity, the poster child of the avant-garde. As one of the most celebrated and well-known painters of the 20th century, his art has been shown and celebrated in countless exhibitions, books and works of scholarship. In the most recent exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Picasso and the Avant Garde in Paris, he shines in the spotlight yet again. This time, however, he is not alone.

This exhibition of over 200 works of art focuses on the work done by Picasso and his contemporaries in the Avant-Garde circles of Paris during the first half of the 20th century. The exhibition surveys the decades of Picasso’s life from 1905-1945 — from his early attempts at abstraction to his later development of cubism. However, the exhibition not only gives a sense of Picasso’s work amidst the rich artistic climate of Paris, but brings to the public a wealth of seminal work by lesser-known artists as well. The iconic works of Picasso hang alongside the work of many other artists, all of whom were critical to the development of modernity, such as Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, Joan Míro, Marie Laurencin, Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Duchamp, Frances Picabia and Marc Chagall.

“The mix was focused yet eclectic, which made for a very enjoyable stroll through the galleries,” Alexander Hollender ’11, an Art History major, said, commenting on the inclusion of such a diversity of artists.

Included in the exhibition are also pieces that, due to their fragile nature, have thus gone unseen by the public. Collages and papier-collé pieces by Picasso and Braque (who often collaborated with Picasso) done during their experiments with cubism bring a number of new images to this oeuvre.

“They’re really going to make the viewing experience very special,” Michael Taylor, Curator of Modern Art at the museum, said. These collages incorporate scraps of colored paper as well as more unconventional materials such as newspaper clippings, wallpaper scraps, advertisements and even sheet music. The use of such materials play with the viewers’ understanding of objects and perceptions of space; in these images, a cutout print of an apple stands in to signify a fruit bowl, the word “Journal” coming to mean newspaper.

“I have been thinking about how to display our Picasso collection in new ways for years,” Taylor said. This exhibition aims to do just that, focusing not only on the works of Picasso but also giving a sense of the many forces, and many artists, that contributed to the Avant-Garde movement and the movement of the art world towards modernism. The immense impact of the First and Second World Wars, the inclusion of expatriate artists and patrons from America and the birth of Surrealism embedded itself into the public consciousness, inevitably shaping Paris’ artistic environment and the work that came out of it.

The exhibition has made some interesting curatorial choices as well. For example, one room of the exhibition is painted a vibrant red. “Part of choosing the wall colors is trying to help the curators to tell the story,” Jack Schlechter, Installations Designer, said. This room, which stands out from the rest of the exhibition’s muted white walls, has been painted in this way to look like the Salon d’Automne of 1912, where some of the work of now world-renowned artists was first shown. The room contains no works by Picasso or Braque, who were kept from showing their work at the annual Salons in Paris. Instead, this room gives the viewer a sense of what the face of cubism looked like at the time, and how the public back then experienced and understood this movement.

With Picasso as its focal point, the exhibition is sure to draw a large crowd. But what makes this exhibition unique is that it brings a new narrative to the public in highlighting unseen pieces and lesser-known artists. “Oddly enough I was more excited about the other artists the exhibit introduced to me than I was about seeing Picasso’s work,” Hollender said.

The show is now on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through April 25th.

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