When an exhibition of current Picasso work opened in Avignon in 1970, the work was met with bemusement and bafflement. How may the painter of the Blue Interval and Cubism be the identical artist, now aged 89, behind these infantile, nearly cartoonish, but ferociously sexual work? Many thought that Picasso had misplaced his Midas Contact. John Berger thought that the value of Picasso’s fame was an incapability to develop. “Nevertheless attention-grabbing they might be,” Berger mentioned of the later work, “they’re not more than workout routines in portray.” The acerbic English critic Brian Sewell referred to as Picasso’s later work “among the saddest, most degraded, most humiliating, repetitive, tedious, uninspired, obsessive and crudely painted banalities which have ever masqueraded as artwork.” Historian and critic Douglas Cooper put it most bluntly, summing up Picasso’s output of the interval as “incoherent doodles executed by a frenetic dotard within the anteroom of demise.” And he was a buddy.
The years since Picasso’s demise have seen a reappraisal of this era, and nearly each different facet of Picasso’s work and life. Audiences are extra acutely aware of his abusive behaviors and significant of his so-called inventive improvements, however the cult of Picasso persists half a century after his demise in 1973. An exhibition of his serviette scribbles would entice guests from everywhere in the world.
Nonetheless, PoMo’s determination to concentrate on Picasso’s ultimate decade, particularly the work produced in Mougins, France, between 1961 and 1972, is an opportunity to step again and ask broader questions, not nearly Picasso himself (if there’s something left to say about him) however about what a late interval in an artist’s life means. For Picasso, it meant portray with such abandon that it will put even essentially the most precocious youngster to disgrace. (I imply this as a praise.) Regardless of the abundance of the work, nevertheless, the painful fact is that they had been created by a person each acknowledging and refusing to acknowledge his personal mortality. A concern of demise coats each portray, even the brightest and most joyous.
Situated in Norway’s third largest metropolis, PoMo opened in February this 12 months with a gaggle present from its personal assortment. “The Code of Portray” is the primary exhibition from a family title and was curated, at the least partly, to draw worldwide guests to the historic Viking capital. Certainly, an exhibition on Picasso is bound to entice art-lovers from afar, and PoMo will little doubt proceed to draw international guests with an exhibition on Louise Bourgeois opening subsequent 12 months.
Picasso produced a staggering variety of works on this late interval, roughly 3000. “The Code of Portray” homes simply over fifty work, however the comparatively small quantity fills up the gorgeous transformed house (the gallery is in what was traditionally the town’s publish workplace), and the vary of topics speaks to Picasso’s infinite curiosity and fascination. There are a number of work of Musketeers, impressed by French literature and historic work, but additionally by up to date depictions of Musketeers on French tv. There are rooms given to deconstructed heads, to work of artists and fashions, self-portraits and nudes. All of them share qualities that outline this era of Picasso: daring and first colours, energetic brushstrokes, garish expressions, sexualized our bodies and grotesque faces.
If Van Gogh is the quintessential tortured artist, Picasso is the quintessential chauvinist. Everyone knows in regards to the affairs (and he’s definitely not alone within the historical past of artwork for having affairs), however his misogyny in actual life is difficult to disregard when his depiction of girls, significantly within the rooms specializing in the painter and mannequin motif and the nudes. The nude work particularly deserve vital consideration. Many are undeniably fascinating for a similar causes they’re disturbing: our bodies are contorted, limbs are severed and genitals are rendered crudely, as if they belonged solely to color and to not an individual. Picasso supposedly as soon as mentioned that there have been “solely two sorts of girls: goddesses and doormats.” In his devotion and manipulation of the ladies he painted, his nude topics look like each.
The textual content on the wall tells audiences that the work “increase important questions in regards to the illustration of girls and the feminine physique within the historical past of artwork.” I hope these work immediate such conversations, however one doesn’t placed on an exhibition of Picasso to foster dialogue a lot as to promote tickets. This isn’t a blunt criticism: Picasso remains to be standard, maybe the preferred artist, and it’s incredible {that a} new gallery has made a reputation for itself with a formidable exhibition. Nonetheless, one hopes future exhibitions can be kinder to feminine artists and topics. (PoMo has dedicated to dedicating 60 % of its assortment funds to the acquisition of works by feminine artists.)
The idea of the exhibition is powerful, however there are a number of curatorial oddities. As an illustration, Picasso is alleged by the curators to have explored gender performativity on this later interval. Some have beforehand argued that Picasso presents gender ambiguously, significantly in work like Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (a piece produced fifty years previous to this late interval), however everyone knows Picasso was no progressive. The textual content on the wall concedes that Picasso’s taking part in with gender “weren’t deliberate decisions in the way in which gender is mentioned at this time” besides, the interpretation appears too beneficiant for Picasso, significantly when so most of the works, most notably the nudes and people depicting artists and fashions, usually are not solely crudely gendered however deal with ladies’s our bodies as deconstructed objects of need from an archetypal male gaze.
One other misstep is presenting the 13 ceramic plates—every of them stunning, painted with the identical broad brushstrokes because the canvases—underneath the title of “Emojis: A Common Language.” A smiling face on a round plate might look much like an emoji, however the comparability ends there. These weren’t communication supplies, and their worthy inclusion within the exhibition—they’re a pleasure to have a look at—is marred by their unhelpful framing. However, it’s the work itself that’s nonetheless the draw, and curators Anna Karina Hofbauer and Dieter Buchhart have executed a wonderful job bringing collectively the works that can attraction to art-lovers and most people alike. That’s to not say everybody will like them, however everybody may have an opinion.
The exhibition ends with a single drawing, unfinished, that may be a form of demise masks. In 1972, when he was 91, Picasso, fearing a demise he knew was slowly encroaching, produced a collection of such self-portraits that extra intently resemble skulls than any recognizable human face. The sketch in query—a wide-eyed, ghostly face, titled merely Tête (The Head)—is a presage to Picasso’s personal demise. It’s the sole image on this room, and the lighting it’s illuminated by is dimmed; it’s as if the exhibition is slowly closing its eyes, anticipating an unbroken sleep. It’s a phenomenal means for the present to bow out, although, like me, many will little doubt return immediately to the primary room and look by way of the exhibition a second time.
Picasso additionally as soon as mentioned, “It took me 4 years to color like Raphael, however a lifetime to color like a toddler.” These work are childlike in essentially the most beneficiant means: they’re playful, puckish, and the alternative of exact. Why ought to they be? Picasso mastered precision earlier than he reached puberty. The up to date critiques had been proper to be baffled, however their dismissal was short-sighted. Picasso, who greater than every other artist is synonymous with reinvention, didn’t return to childhood a lot as uncover it totally for the primary time at 90. The psychologist Alice Miller, slightly than seeing Picasso’s late work as regressive, noticed the interval as Picasso lastly expressing what for years he had repressed. Since he had mastered approach years in the past, he was lastly “in a position to let what was saved in his unconscious converse by way of colours.” Therefore, the interval produced Picasso’s most primal and carnal work—all of it coated with concern. If he actually noticed the world as a toddler in his dotage, it’s no marvel he resisted demise by way of his industrious output for so long as he did.
“Pablo Picasso: The Code of Portray” is on view at PoMo within the Norwegian metropolis of Trondheim till October 26, 2025. The exhibition is touring Scandinavia and can transfer to the Moderna Museet in Stockholm on November 22, 2025, and the Kunsten Museum of Trendy Artwork in Aalborg on Could 7, 2026.
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