Picasso. Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery

Before seeing the above mentioned exhibition I had read about Picasso, as well as seen movies and documentaries about his life and work. I had also discussed this artist with my art teachers. All this experience had made me quite convinced that I have a certain amount of adequate knowledge about this artist and that I am able to evaluate something that is put in front of me in relation to Picasso. Evaluate on my own and be able to understand details. But the exhibition contained information and viewpoints from different art related people that added to my knowledge about Picasso and I am very satisfied that it enriched my outlook in ways I wouldn’t have imagined. It is exciting and motivating to find out something new about something you thought you know enough about. 1) Picasso had a great sense of humour. I knew he was a fun and wit loving person but not to such extent I saw in the exhibition. He ridiculed his friends and had fun with it. 2) Picasso was very aware of himself. When he portrayed himself he showed his own face with no flattering. He was afraid of death, I would say terrified. It seems that when a person gets old there comes acceptance of death as a sign of maturity. However, it is not the case every time. The last self-portrait that Picasso made was full of fear. 3) The style and choice of colours Picasso used to portray women was deliberate and well thought out. Style, colours, angles, lines – all of that showed the actual character of a person. Picasso  could use e.g. charcoal and paper to make 3 portraits of 3 women and each portrait was completely different. Also the poses, position of limbs, face expressions helped to reveal a character of each person. Besides the portraits showed what each woman meant to the artist at a certain period, his relationship with her, feelings. The person did not need to be portrayed in a realistic manner as the character was shown so masterfully that even with no realism it could be easily understood which particular person is depicted in a portrait.

I read the exhibition review in the Guardian, it was not a positive review. It described Picasso as a master but the exhibition itself as a failure. I partly agree to it as I think that there were details which were missing and there were other areas which were covered too much or not covered enough. At the same time the exhibition was not about Cubism, nor about Picasso in general, it was about Picasso’s portraits and this brief it fulfilled very well showing how Picasso started making portraits, how his style and skills developed over the years and what caught his attention, what seemed the most interesting to him. On the one hand, we can say that there were not enough paintings in Cubism style but on the other hand, is it so necessary to focus on Cubism if the exhibition is about Portraits? The reviewer of the Guardian seemed to have forgotten what the exhibition was about, he was too interested in criticising the lack of paintings in different styles, the lack of full coverage of every single detail of Picasso’s life, the ‘wrong’ division of the exhibition parts etc. I can say from my viewpoint that a minus of the exhibition was that it seemed a bit too subjective. I am not informed of who made the decision to show certain works instead of other works but on the whole there was a sense of something not quite complete. Besides there was no explanation whatsoever about why there were parts of the exhibition dedicated to particular people (e.g. a whole room for portraits of one person) but other parts contained a mix of portraits of different people and very different styles and years. I think that what was necessary was either an explanation for the viewers why there is such a division or a different kind of structure (e.g. division according to caricature, realism, cubism or according to timeline or according to people).