Monster Mash: Picasso Meets Degas at the Clark

Growing up, I spent many a rainy or wintry Saturday afternoon watching classic old horror films such as Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man or Dracula Vs. Frankenstein. It always seemed that one monster inevitably ran into another. Modern museum blockbuster exhibitions often have the same feel as they try to pit one monster talent versus another in their galleries. For example, in 2003, the MoMA’s Matisse Picasso squared off the two modern heavyweights so closely even the “versus” was superfluous. The Philadelphia Museum of Art’s current show Late Renoir could easily be retitled Renoir Meets Matisse or Renoir Vs. Picasso. Pablo Picasso enters the art history ring again in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute’s Picasso Looks at Degas, the first exhibition to pair those two artists and study the latter’s influence on the former. This monster mash of influence and difference illuminates both artists in a fresh way that’s downright scary. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Monster Mash."

[Image: The Blue Room (The Tub), 1901, by Pablo Picasso. Oil on canvas, 50.5 x 61.6 cm. The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Acquired 1927 (1554). © 2010 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.]

[Many thanks to the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute for providing me with the image above from and a review copy of the catalogue to Picasso Looks at Degas, which runs through September 12, 2010.]