Yes, Virginia, There is a Picasso

U.S. Tour of the Cubist Pioneer's Artworks Touches Local Pride

Richmond, Va.—The floodgates at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, host to a three-month Picasso exhibition, are just beginning to open. In the exhibit's third week, the word is getting out. The crowds are picking up. Over a single recent weekend, 7,000 people swirled through the maze of ten gallery rooms to see the Spanish painter’s work.

            After its recent building expansion, the Virginia Museum was able to persuade the home of the world’s largest Picasso collection, the Musée National Picasso in Paris, to make Richmond the east coast stop for an international seven-city tour. It is made possible during the Paris museum’s renovations through 2012.

            While some art-scene writers are sounding a bit dismissive—noting that this is merely a convenient “reno show” prompted by European renovations—the public is following common sense: Here is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. When else, short of a Parisian trip, can you see a full sampling of Picasso’s works?

            Some of what the critics say is true, of course. The 176 works cover such a span of Picasso’s career (1904-1972) that, while starting off strong in his vigorous, innovative youth, they can end weak, reflecting his old age. Only a small portion of works are well-known masterpieces. Even so, this unevenness is part of the experience. Many of the visitors are saying, “I didn’t know Picasso did so many things,” or, “I didn’t know he painted so many years.” One visitor candidly says, “I still don’t ‘get it,’” but that is not uncommon during encounters with modern art. It is an acquired taste.
            Behind the Picasso mask, there is a life of gritty detail that few people learn about, since that takes dedicated reading (the museum show offers little on this front except the book shop). As to his art, it also takes time to appreciate what Picasso was truly a master of: the use of line in drawing, his freedom with paint, his visual compositions, and his ability to create iconic atmospheres. This is what the exhibit reveals.

            It seems almost useless to say anything descriptive in print (in a blog) since the Virginia Museum Web site, and a virtual tour project, shows nearly all of the exhibition. In fact, it can be so crowded some days, watching the exhibit on the Internet can also seem preferable (or better, go in with the crowds, then go back by Internet to look again).

            What only a real-time visit can offer, however, is a physical sense of the works. In his pencil and pen drawings, and in his etchings, it is remarkable how fine a line Picasso can draw. He shows this especially in very small gouache and oil paintings, as if done with a few hairs on a brush. On the other hand, the brush work in larger paintings can be remarkably casual. The paint runs thin here, thick there, scumbled and scrubbed. What one gathers is that, in the process of composition (and Picasso did like to do quickies), the overall effect was more important than filling in paint with exactitude.

            One other indispensable experience is to see the actual sizes of the Picasso paintings (and sculptures). Some works seen printed large in art books, for instance, are in fact no bigger than an iPad. Other works, shown small on the page, resemble the size of a picture window. Whatever the cost of good canvas, wood, and paper was back in Picasso’s early days, he still apparently used the best, and the paper and linen textures show through.

            For a southern museum such as Richmond’s, the traveling exhibit is an obvious boon, costing it about $5 million, but hopefully generating more (if the hoped-for 200,000 attendance bears out) and raising its regional prominence. In the U.S. leg of the world tour, the previous stop was Seattle (attendance 400,000 for a much larger metropolitan area), and next comes San Francisco. We’ll see if the U.S. event can reach a million viewers.

            Back in 1897, it was a New York Sun newspaper editorialist who famously told a young letter-writer, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,” to perpetuate the wonders of youth. Now, it is the state of Virginia that’s helping perpetuate appreciation of European art, which in its concreteness, craft and accretions of history, is a tangible treat amid much of today’s contemporary art, which can seem very make-believe.