How Picasso Found Truth in a Closed Room

One of the first words nixed by postgraduate education is “truth.” Amidst all the deconstructing and linguistic acrobatics, “truth” is just too troublesome and old fashioned. So, imagine my surprise to see the title of art historian T.J. Clark’s newest book, Picasso and Truth: From Cubism to Guernica. Originally delivered in 2009 as a series of six lectures at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, Picasso and Truth shows how Clark rediscovered Pablo Picasso’s struggles with the concept of “truth” in his painting over the course of first half of the 20^th century, starting with 1901’s The Blue Room (shown above) and ending with 1937’s Guernica. Using meticulous close reading of numerous paintings in between those two poles and philosophical assists from Friedrich Nietzsche and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Clark weaves his way through Picasso’s process, nimbly leaps over the landmines of strict biographical interpretation, and arrives finally at a complex, challenging, but coherent concept of how Picasso found truth in a closed room and spent the rest of his life trying to find it again. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "How Picasso Found Truth in a Closed Room."

[Many thanks to Princeton University Press for providing me with a review copy of Picasso and Truth: From Cubism to Guernica by T.J. Clark.]

Is Dying Detroit Trying to Murder its Museum?

How desperate can a city facing financial armageddon get? What’s the last resort for cities such as Detroit, wounded first by the failing American auto industry and then set bleeding like every other American city after the 2008 financial crash? Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr raised the possibility of selling the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts, worth about $15 billion, to help pay off some of the city’s debt. Setting aside the complicated issue of whether a city even has the legal right to sell its museum’s collection like any other movable asset, does a city have the moral right to sell works of art? What would the long-term effect of making such a short-term decision? If dying Detroit murders its museum, will it lose its soul, and the soul of its people? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Is Dying Detroit Trying to Murder its Museum?"

How the Great Artists Imagined Paradise Lost, and Regained

“We are stardust. We are golden. We are billion year old carbon. And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden,” sang Joni Mitchell in her song “Woodstock.” Every generation before and since has longed to return to the garden—the Edenic paradise found in every human culture and religion on earth. In Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse: Visions of Arcadia, we see how these three giants of modern art traced their own paths back. Along with a supporting cast of artists spanning centuries and crossing international borders, their journeys become a massively complex web of influences and dialogues that demonstrate just how deeply this vision of heaven on earth lies in the collective consciousness of humanity and continues to influence not only our taste in artists, but also our taste in presidents. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "How the Great Artists Imagined Paradise Lost,and Regained." 

[Image: Bathers by a River, March 1909-10, May-November 1913, and early spring 1916-October (?) 1917. Henri Matisse, French, 1869-1954. Oil on canvas, 102 1/2 x 154 3/16 inches (260.4 x 391.6 cm). The Art Institute of Chicago, Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection.]

 
[Many thanks to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for the image above from, other press materials related to, and an invitation to the press preview for Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse: Visions of Arcadia, which runs through September 3, 2012.]

William Etty: The Most Controversial Artist You’ve Never Heard of

His statue has stood outside the York Art Gallery for a century now, but most passersby don’t know the name of William Etty or the works that once made him York’s most famous and infamous native artist. In the exhibition, William Etty: Art and Controversy, which runs through January 22, 2012 at the York Art Gallery, the nudes that brought lavish praise and vicious criticism upon Etty’s head stand for inspection before a new generation. As the curators and essayists of the catalog revisit the old controversies that seem quaint now, they also reveal a different side of Etty that makes him a controversial figure for today. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "William Etty: The Most Controversial Artist You’ve Never Heard of."

[Image: William Etty. Candaules King of Lydia, Shews His Wife by Stealth. Exh. R.A. 1830, Oil on Canvas, Copyright Tate, 2011.]

[Many thanks to the York Art Gallery for providing me with the image above and a review copy of the catalog to the exhibition, William Etty: Art and Controversy, which runs through January 22, 2012.]