In understanding art, social context is always a factor. As life became mechanized, electrified and digitized, technology naturally became an important part of that context. A specific relationship - that of the early French cinema and Cubism - is explored in the current exhibition at Pace Wildenstein.
Picasso, Braque, and Early Film in Cubism features more than 30 works by the two artists, and evokes the milieu in which they were created by housing them in an installation that includes film paraphernalia and projections, even a viewing room for a program of turn-of -the century films that replicates “going to the movies” as Picasso and Braque would have experienced it at the time. A visit takes us into another world and allows us to imagine for ourselves the way in which a new medium revolutionized how we all see the world and influenced and informed the Cubists in their choices of style and subject.
Pablo Picasso . Portrait of a Woman, 1910
courtesy of PaceWildenstein
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Charles H. Bayley
Picture and Painting Fund and Partial gift of Mrs. Gilbert W. Chapman © 2007
Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
The exhibition calls attention to aspects of the film form that we usually take for granted - the way in which time is manipulated by montage, and the cameral selects what portion of the action or even a person we shall see and accept as “whole.” Viewing film, we are totally dependent on the single focus of the camera, and the choices of the director to supply us with our information about the narrative. Is it any wonder, then, that other artists observing the advent of the auteur in a visual form would seek to similarly empower themselves by manipulating the image of the subject, flying in the face of naturalism to express their individual point of view?
Was their experiment a success? Think of how many times you have walked into a gallery and said in a split second, “Aah, that’s a PICASSO!”
through June 23, 2007 at PaceWildenstein, 32 East 57th Street, New York City
all rights reserved by Resolve40 © 2007
