Reinventing the Familiar
PICASSO Challenging the Past. National Gallery, London.
25th February – 7th June 2009.
Sponsored by Credit Suisse.
Present economic realities not unnoted in the introductory words from Eric Varvel, CEO Middle East, Europe and Africa.
Read the full article as a pdf here
This exhibition, curated by Christopher Riopelle and Anne Robbins of the National Gallery, aims to demonstrate Picasso’s debt to the past and to show how he confronted the work of artists, initially those of Spanish origin, whom he considered masters in their particular genre, and whose accepted brilliance offered an obstruction or challenge to the claims of his own genius. It provides an intense and revealing experience, setting out the evidence in a series of galleries dedicated to a variety of themes that are illustrative of most aspects and periods of Picasso’s long, productive and very public career.
Aspects of Picasso’s work on show at the National Gallery have a familiar feel. Beginning with the years of the first art schools, up to and beyond the advent of Abstract Expressionism, an essential part of the education of the painter was the study of the old masters, the established greats. It was believed that the most effective way of understanding the complexity of composition — colour, tone, harmony, discord and all that made a work of art successful — was by making a transcription. This entailed the close analysis of a painting, considering scale, colour, content and shape, as well as the abstract and compositional elements upon which the work was based. A thorough engagement with transcription is a vital part of a musical education, familiar to those who learn the piano and other instruments and an essential element in the development of jazz and modern music.
It is strange, therefore, that in none of the many reviews I read was there any mention of the tradition of transcription in the visual arts. Even today in the National Gallery one sees artists and students working from the great masters. There is a long established and ongoing residency programme where prominent contemporary artists engage in responses to work hanging in the galleries. However, few established artists continue with, and develop, transcription as an essential part of their mature work, as did Picasso...
Osi Rhys Osmond
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