On April 8, 2023, an auspicious anniversary will take place, marking 50 years since the 1973 death of Pablo Picasso. If you find yourself thinking that it might be time to revisit the artist’s life and work, you have that in common with countless museum curators across the world.
As Gareth Harris writes at The Art Newspaper, dozens of museums are planning to revisit Picasso’s art in the year to come. They’ll be taking part in a program known as Celebration Picasso 1973-2023, which has the backing of both the French and Spanish governments. Among the spaces participating will be the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid.
Picasso’s grandson Bernard Ruiz-Picasso is on the commission behind Celebration Picasso, but it sounds as though the organizers are leaving room to address the artist’s less appealing qualities as well. Harris’s article cites a statement from the organizers as noting that the retrospectives will include discussions of “the reception of his work under the prism of feminism.”
In particular, Picasso’s misogyny has been critiqued in recent years, and the shifting perspectives on the artist’s life and work will be discussed as part of a forthcoming exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art that Hannah Gadsby has a hand in organizing.
Whether you’re an ardent admirer of all things Picasso or more skeptical of his work and legacy, it certainly seems as though this array of exhibitions will have something to offer. Will this also result in more covers of The Modern Lovers’ “Pablo Picasso” being recorded? We’ll know that in 2023.
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