Strange priorities

A couple of weeks ago, when you could sense the approaching lockdown in the air, I made my way to the Picasso and Paper exhibition at the Royal Academy. I knew that it might be the last chance to see it (and the gallery did close the day after I went), as who knows what exhibitions will still be parked in the same place after the lockdown lifts. I’m not a huge fan of Picasso; I don’t mind his art per se, and I do realise how talented he was and why he is one of the greats, but the guy was an A-HOLE in his private life and caused a lot of people nearest to him a lot of pain, to say the least.

Anyway, you can’t deny that the man was an extraordinary artist. I had only heard great things about this particular exhibition that showed work spanning his whole career that was linked to his use of paper (sometimes a bit tenuously). I especially liked his drypoint etchings. There’s something about the simplicity of the delicate lines that really speaks to me.

Picasso did these little paper cut outs when he was eight or nine years old. Just amazing!

He also looked a bit like Prince in his blue period, don’t you think?

This dry point - gaaah. I should’ve just picked this off the wall and walked off with it. But then I guess I would be in prison now.

It wasn’t that busy in the gallery, as most people had stopped travelling into the centre of London by this time, and the over 70’s had been told to self-isolate. Seeing these two, in their matching outfits, still out, prioritising a last dose of art before keeping safe, cheered me up no end.

This cut-out was only visible if you held it up to the light, and so it was lit up from behind so you could see the hidden artwork inside.

This drawing of Jean Cocteau, Olga (his first wife), Eric Satie and Clive Bell was my fave. My favourite paintings and drawings seem to be of interiors or people just doing normal things, like a snapshot, if you know what I mean. A snapshot as a photograph is not really a surprise, but to see how much time and effort someone has put into painting or a drawing of a fairly mundane scene is pretty special.

Picasso made the costume design for Jean Cocteau’s 1917 ballet ‘Parade’ (which Eric Satie made the music for - I mean, just wow!), and this is one of them. Love the colours.

A paper collage of a guitar - again in a pretty tasty colour palette.

These heads/skulls were torn out of paper.

And this huge collage was made of left over wallpaper scraps.

I loooooove woodcuts (and linocuts), and this is such an amazing example. I’d love to have the actual woodcut up on the wall, in fact in my next life I’d like to come back as a woodcut/linocut artist please. I’m not patient or skilled well enough with my hands to be one in this one :)

Hello naked lady! This would be a really good lockdown thing to do; cut shapes out of cardboard and then make something like this out of them. But we’ve stopped buying stuff now, so there is no packaging for us to use. I’m not complaining! It’s actually really liberating to no longer be a consumer - but I digress.

They showed such a cool film at the exhibition too, ‘Le mystére Picasso’ by Henri-Georges Clouzout from 1956, which you can rent or buy on YouTube, which I’m definitely going to do asap.

In the clip I watched, they showed how Picasso made this piece of art, ‘Visage: The head of a faun’, and it’s fascinating. To see how he keeps changing it, but also how he searches the paper with his eye and then makes his marks with such conviction is kind of breathtaking. You can watch that same clip here.

There are so many great cultural and arty things to get involved with, or listen to/watch on online at the moment - and this link list from The Modern House journal has some interesting suggestions.