Find Your Own Personal Picasso, at SAM

Pablo Picasso was the world’s first truly modern artist, and not solely in terms of technique. Before the term "branding" was a gleam in a marketer's eye, he understood the commercial importance of an artist’s public persona, actively pursued PR opportunities (he was constantly featured in Life and Look magazines), raked in money from appearances in movies and on TV, used the mass production of art as a way to scale his output, and created a complete, complex mythology around his life and art.

However, judging from the Picasso, Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris exhibit now at SAM (on view from October 8, 2010 to January 17, 2011), he never committed an artist’s worst sin: He never bought his own myth, or let it rule him.

The staff as SAM worked countless hours bringing this exhibition, the first to ever travel from the Musée National Picasso (which is being renovated) and the largest exhibition of the artist’s work in this country since 1939, to Seattle.

It is a testament to Picasso's prodigious talent and output that this blockbuster show, which you would expect to show signature works, or works from a particular period, presents you instead with more personal glimpses of the artist. Picasso’s strength as an exhibition is that it is a collection of works that were in the artist’s personal collection, works he never sold, works he held near, works he couldn’t let go. The exhibition is great not so much for its celebration of his iconographic fame as an artist, but in its celebration of Picasso the man.

Works from every phase of his life are on view. The exhibition includes 150 works, 75 paintings and sculptures, in 12 rooms, each room dedicated to a period of his life.

Picasso is noted for his frequent changes in style and artistic direction. He had a blue period, a rose period, a cubist period and so on and so on, and it’s fascinating to see how these changes were not due to his need to follow fashion, but were forced on him by personal joy, such as marriage and love, and tragedy, such as war and the death of family and friends.

Picasso was, for the most part, a figure painter; there are few landscapes in the exhibition. The artist loved the human figure and he loved to mess with it, transform it into strange shapes, pose it in freakish but revealing positions.

The beauty of Picasso is that the figures in this exhibition are his friends, family and, most importantly, the loves of his life. He had a luscious, exotic cadre of muses and they are all here: Fernande Olivier, his Bohemian first flame; Marcelle Humbert, whom he called Eva; Olga Khokhlova, the ballerina he married and repeatedly cheated on; Marie-Therese Walter, a 17-year-old he had a long affair with; Dora Maar, the seductive, mysterious woman whom Picasso shared the most tumultuous time of his life with, and who documented Picasso working on his undisputed masterpiece, Guernica; Francoise Gilot, who was 40 years younger than Picasso when their affair started and later wrote a book about him that, briefly caused a scandal for the artist; and later muses Genevieve Laporte and Jacquline Roque.

Picasso lavished great love and joy in his paintings of these women, particularly Maar who is the subject of a stunning collection of portraits in this exhibition. He clearly loved her, loved them all, and it’s obvious that he never wanted to give up any of his paintings of them. He kept these visions of his great loves with him until his death in 1973.

Best of all, this exhibition features multiple self portraits, starting with a nude self-portrait of 1906 and a cubist self-portrait of 1907 all the way to a wonderful self-portrait from 1953 which features only his shadow falling on the works in his studio. No artist in history, save van Gogh, has painted a more revealing series of self-portraits.

As a collection of personal art, the exhibition features many oddities, one-shots and curiosities. A small oil from 1917 features two woman running on a beach. It’s unlike anything else he ever did. Painted on a family vacation, it’s filled with wonder and joy. Bather Opening a Cabana (1928) and Bathers Playing with a Ball (1928) are also small oils that are lovely. There are works done in homage to Renoir and Velasquez as well as studies for larger, more famous works.

Many will be surprised by the many sculptures in the exhibit. The Jester (1907) is marvelous as is a strange sculpture of a woman from the 1930s made with the flotsam and jetsam around his studio. Two kitchen pasta strainers make up the head. Best of all is a wonderful head of a bull made from the seat and handlebars of a bicycle. 

There is also a gallery of revealing, personal photographs of and by the artist. The best is by the famous photographer Robert Capa, who visited the artist in his studio after France was liberated from the Nazis in 1944. Picasso had stayed in France during the German occupation, and he was no doubt a thorn in the Nazi sides, a degenerate artist that was untouchable. After France was freed, everyone stopped by to meet the great artist, including the likes of Bradley and Patton. He was the center of the world then, the survivor. Capa’s portrait of him sitting in his studio surrounding by adoring onlookers tells the tale.

Make no mistake this is a major show. In a preview earlier in the week, staff from SAM and Museée National Picasso, Paris used the following words to describe the exhibition: milestone, landmark, thrilling, important, massive, stunning, awe-inspiring, and extraordinary. But don’t go expecting to be blown away by spectacle. The genius of this exhibition isn’t the way it screams to the heavens about the greatness of Picasso. Instead, the joy comes from seeing a lifelong, intimate portrait of a man at work, in love with his art, and his subjects.

Tickets are $23 for adults, $20 for seniors and military with ID, and $18 for students. Children under 12 are free as are SAM members (it has clearly never been a better time to become a SAM member). This coming weekend through Monday, the first 100 people--wearing blue--get in free. Your ticket comes with a time to enter the Picasso exhibit, to regulate the number of viewers at any given time, so don't buy in advance and show up late.