{"id":5116,"date":"2025-05-01T19:29:57","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T19:29:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/05\/01\/arts-interviews-curator-michael-cary-on-picasso-tete-a-tete\/"},"modified":"2025-05-01T19:30:02","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T19:30:02","slug":"arts-interviews-curator-michael-cary-on-picasso-tete-a-tete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/05\/01\/arts-interviews-curator-michael-cary-on-picasso-tete-a-tete\/","title":{"rendered":"Arts Interviews: Curator Michael Cary On \u2018Picasso, T\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Paloma Picasso\u2019s contributions from her private collection mark a rare public showing of works long held out of institutional circulation. Artwork \u00a9 2025 Estate of Pablo Picasso \/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York \/ Photo: Owen Conway \/ Courtesy Gagosian<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After a messy relationship and breakup with Pablo Picasso<\/a>, his muse Dora Maar<\/a> said, \u201cAll his portraits of me are lies. They\u2019re all Picassos. Not one is Dora Maar<\/a>.\u201d The quote has an element of truth in that all portraits are subjective. Usually, Picasso began with a faithful likeness of his subject, and as he grew to know them better, he would change it, making it more abstract.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhen he meets a woman, she\u2019s a pretty face. After he spends a few years with her, she becomes a real person, she becomes more complex, so her portrait becomes more complex,\u201d Gagosian curator Michael Cary<\/a> tells Observer, speaking about \u201cPicasso: T\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate\u201d, his thirteenth show of works by the artist at the gallery, which was co-presented by Paloma Picasso<\/a>. \u201cMarie-Th\u00e9r\u00e8se is an exception because when he meets her, he\u2019s trying to conceal her identity<\/a>. So, she starts off abstract and becomes more recognizable.\u201d<\/p>\n

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SEE ALSO:<\/i><\/b> 10 Must-See Gallery Shows to Catch in New York This May<\/i><\/b><\/a>\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Attend the show and you will see her in a way you never have before. Of the three portraits of Marie-Th\u00e9r\u00e8se painted in 1937, two have never been publicly shown, and one was shown only in the 1953 show at Palazzo Reale in Milan and the 1981 retrospective in Tokyo. Of the more than fifty paintings (mostly portraits), sculptures and drawings spanning 1896 to 1972, there are twelve works on exhibit that have never been publicly shown, and another fifteen haven\u2019t been seen since 1981.<\/p>\n

The idea for \u201cPicasso: T\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate\u201d comes from the 1932 Paris retrospective at the Galerie Georges Petit, curated by the artist himself. In it, he made the unusual decision to pick works from throughout his career and put them in conversation with each other, something no curator at the time was doing.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomeone asked me how I was going to organize this exhibition. I replied, \u2018Badly,\u2019\u201d Picasso told French newspaper L\u2019Intransigeant<\/i> at the time. \u201cFor an exhibition, like a painting, well or badly \u2018organized,\u2019 it all comes down to the same thing. What counts is a certain consistency in the ideas. And when this consistency exists, as with even the most incompatible couples, things always work out.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cPicasso: T\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate\u201d resists hagiography, offering instead a complex portrait of an artist shaped as much by imitation as by obsession. Artwork \u00a9 2025 Estate of Pablo Picasso \/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York \/ Photo: Owen Conway \/ Courtesy Gagosian<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The new show\u2019s four portraits of Marie-Th\u00e9r\u00e8se, painted within two years of each other, are vastly different. Two still lifes, Fruit Dish and Guitar<\/i>, 1932, and Still Life with Skull, Leeks, and Pitcher<\/i>, 1945, resonate with one another and enter a dialogue with the bronze sculpture, Skull (death\u2019s head)<\/i>, 1943.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy changing medium, that enabled him to not get stuck in a corner. By tackling new kinds of problems, it took him on a different path. And once he understood that, he could bring it back into what he was doing before,\u201d Paloma Picasso told artist Peter Doig<\/a> in a conversation at the gallery earlier this month. \u201cSo, there was a dialogue inside his creativity. There\u2019s a lot of chatter going on between these works. It\u2019s like we\u2019re eavesdropping at a party\u2014and it gives us enormous flexibility and a sense of fun in how we present them.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Gagosian and Cary took a list of paintings to Paloma, her curiosity was sparked by the thematic connections they were making. So she turned to her own collection and pulled out a few works that had long been out of the public eye.<\/p>\n

While most of Picasso\u2019s heirs have loaned their father\u2019s works for exhibitions, Paloma has mainly refrained, with the exception of the Tokyo 1981 show. \u201cThe bulk of her collection hasn\u2019t gone out into the world. She wasn\u2019t a big lender. And because institutions weren\u2019t sure of what she had, they didn\u2019t ask for loans,\u201d notes Cary.<\/p>\n

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Pablo Picasso, Femme au B\u00e9ret Bleu Assise dans un Fauteuil Gris, Manches Rouges (Marie-Th\u00e9r\u00e8se)<\/em>, 1937; Oil on canvas, 39 3\/8 x 31 1\/2 inches (100 x 80 cm). \u00a9 2025 Estate of Pablo Picasso \/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York \/ Photo: Sandra Pointet \/ Courtesy Gagosian<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWhen my father passed away, there were so many Picassos around the world already in so many different museums that people thought there\u2019s nothing left in the house,\u201d noted Paloma. \u201cBut he needed to have them in his house. Even if he was not looking at them, knowing that they were there meant that he could go back to something.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Picasso split with Paloma\u2019s mother, painter Fran\u00e7oise Gilot, she and her brother Claude spent holidays and summers with their famous father. Because she was quiet and didn\u2019t cause a ruckus, Paloma often sat in his studio, drawing with pencils and crayons alongside him. When she asked him his opinion of her work, he told her, \u201cThat\u2019s for you to decide, whether it\u2019s good or not,\u201d recalled Paloma. \u201cI\u2019m not going to tell you what to do. You have to figure it out by yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are so many sycophants who wrote about this work\u2014he\u2019s the maestro, the genius, the monster\u2014but to Paloma, he was dad. That\u2019s a very unique perspective,\u201d offers Cary. \u201cShe doesn\u2019t talk about him like he\u2019s a genius or a monster, but as a person. Talking about him like he\u2019s a genius is shorthand to a dead end. It does him a disservice. He worked alone in the studio every day for eighty years. He almost didn\u2019t do anything else. The reason we pay attention to his work is because he worked really hard at it, not because he had some supernatural powers.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Pablo Picasso, T\u00eate Trois-Quarts Gauche<\/em>, 1945; Oil on canvas, 31 7\/8 x 25 5\/8 inches (81 x 65 cm). \u00a9 2025 Estate of Pablo Picasso \/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York \/ Photo: Sandra Pointet \/ Courtesy Gagosian<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Picasso stole from everyone on his way to finding his voice. Some of the early works in Barcelona\u2019s Picasso Museum show influences ranging from Toulouse-Lautrec to Vincent van Gogh<\/a>. His Las Meninas<\/i> series is directly inspired by Vel\u00e1zquez\u2019s iconic 1656 work of the same name. Diego Rivera<\/a>, who knew him briefly while in Paris, accused him of co-opting his technique for painting flora. And sculptor Alberto Giacometti<\/a> would pull the blinds on his studio when Picasso walked by lest he borrow ideas.<\/p>\n

\u201cPicasso said you should try to paint like other painters because you try that and you fail at it. And failing to paint like someone else, you become yourself,\u201d says Cary. \u201cThat\u2019s a worldview, an ethos, a method of working that is kind of new. He invented that way of thinking about how you use the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPicasso: T\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate<\/a>\u201d is at Gagosian (980 Madison Avenue, New York) through July 3, 2025.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\"Paloma<\/p><\/div>\n