What’s Black and White and Picasso All Over?

Your college art history textbook probably tore Pablo Picasso’s oeuvre into more digestible bits such as “Blue Period” and “Rose Period.” A new exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City adds a new “period” to the list—Picasso’s lifelong “Black and White Period.” In Picasso Black and White, which runs through January 23, 2013, we see how Picasso often stripped his art of color entirely to focus primarily on getting the message across through line and symbol. Ironically, the “realest Picasso” may not be the artist working in blue or rose or the man living a long, colorful existence, but rather the creator of colorless, powerful scenes and sculptures. By the time you get to the end of the exhibition, you’ll know the answer to the question, “What’s black and white and Picasso all over?” Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "What’s Black and White and Picasso All Over?"

[Image: Pablo Picasso. Mother with Dead Child II, Postscript to Guernica (Femme avec enfant mort II, Post-scriptum à Guernica). Grands-Augustins, Paris, September 26, 1937. Oil on canvas, 130 x 195 cm. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Bequest of the artist. © 2012 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: © Archivo fotográfico Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.]

[Many thanks to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City for providing me with the image above and other press materials related to Picasso Black and White, which runs through January 23, 2013.]