Review: Picasso season arrives in L.A. with two smashing museum shows
AUGUST 20, 2012
The artist with the most sold works of Picasso has arrived in Los Angeles for two exhibitions at Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
The first is of the Spanish master, which will open this Labor Day weekend during the annual Festival of Impressionist and Modern Art. It features 15 works from around the world, including his iconic blue and yellow “Girl With a Red Hat” with a basket of potatoes. It runs through Oct. 27.
Next is a show titled “Picasso: The Complete Works,” also happening this weekend. It looks at his early career in Paris and Spain, the years he lived in Paris in the mid-20th century and his last years in his native Spain. It runs Sept. 4-Jan. 31.
“Picasso, Modernism and American Art” looks at a number of paintings by the artist, some in his early work in Paris and some from later in his career, in works dating from 1914 to 1953.
“The Spanish Picasso” features some of the artist’s most well-known paintings, with works by Miró, Orozco, Goya and Rivera.
The first is a natural extension of the museum’s efforts to expand its holdings to include more of a nonconformist, non-Western perspective. The museum’s holdings of Western art were a big influence on the LACMA show, and the museum is hoping to continue that same trend.
This museum, and the collection of Western art it is showing, was what drove Andy Warhol to create his seminal, seminal exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1965. The museum’s holdings there helped inspire Warhol to create the famed New York Fashion Show in 1966, where he first got international attention with his “Performance Art Now.”
The museum’s art is also an important part