'It’s Pablo-matic: Picasso According To Hannah Gadsby' examines the artist’s complicated legacy through a critical, contemporary, and feminist lens, even as it acknowledges his work’s transformative power and lasting influence. Photo: AFP
Genius or misogynist - or both? Fifty years after art icon Pablo Picasso's death, his legacy is reassessed by comedian Hannah Gadsby in a Brooklyn Museum exhibition in New York, this time through a contemporary, feminist lens.
In her 2018 Netflix special Nanette, Gadsby expressed "hate" for the Spanish master of Cubism and the creator of works like Guernica and Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.
But in It's Pablo-matic: Picasso According To Hannah Gadsby (which runs till Sept 24) - one of the many eagerly awaited shows under the aegis of France and Spain marking the 50th anniversary of his death - the approach is more nuanced.
Picasso (1881-1973) remains one of the most influential artists of the modern world, often hailed as a dynamic and creative genius.
But in the wake of the #Metoo movement, the reputation of this workaholic with a vast output of paintings, sketches and sculpture has been tarnished by accusations he exerted a violent hold over the women who shared his life and inspired his art.
People walk past a work of art by Pablo Picasso titled 'Woman in Grey' on display at an exhibition titled 'It's Pablo-matic: Picasso According To Hannah Gadsby' at the Brooklyn Museum in the Brooklyn borough of New York. Photo: AFP
In Gadsby's written and audio commentaries accompanying the pieces in the Brooklyn Museum, the Australian humourist refuses to separate the man from the artist, unearthing symbols of misogyny in Picasso's paintings and drawings.
She points to the penis in the centre of his 1931 painting The Sculptor, proof in her view that Picasso "couldn't even separate himself from his art in his art."
'Admiration and anger'
Catherine Morris, chief curator of the museum's Center for Feminist Art and a co-curator of Pablo-matic, offers a more measured assessment.
"You're dealing with a really complex and nuanced situation of an artist who is undeniably a genius, but also a less-than-perfect human," said Morris at a media preview of the exhibit. Gadsby herself was not present.
"Admiration and anger can co-exist," warns a preface of the exhibition, which has been organised in collaboration with the Musee National Picasso-Paris in France.
The Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition is organised with Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby, whose groundbreaking 2018 comedy special 'Nanette' called out the inexcusable behaviour of some of art history’s most towering figures, Picasso in particular. Photo: AFP
Picasso is surrounded by women in the exhibition - not just his muses, but rather artists of his time, some of whom struggled to counter the prevailing masculine narrative of the modernist movement.
They "often didn't have the same support or access to the institutional structures that helped foster Picasso's genius," observed Lisa Small, senior curator of European Art at the Brooklyn.
Visitors can study nude drawings from the 1930s by American Louise Nevelson (1899-1988). Such images were "revolutionary at the time because at that stage (it was) quite difficult for women to even be allowed into figure drawing classes," Morris said.
Works by others in America's feminist art movement are on display, including by African-American painter Faith Ringgold and the Guerrilla Girls.
Also included are drawings by Kathe Kollwitz (1867-1945), a German expressionist who was "incredibly skilled, both technically and emotionally," Small added. - AFP
