Fifty years after his death, the ghost of Pablo Picasso continues to haunt artists across the globe. What to do with that specter has become a subject of debate. Should we exorcise it, banishing it for good because of the well-documented misogyny and cruelty of its progenitor? Or should we embrace it, knowing that to escape it entirely would be impossible?
Since Picasso’s passing in 1973, contemporary artists have come up with all sorts of answers to the quandary. Some have examined Picasso’s influence, suggesting that his many artistic innovations pointed a way forward for other artists while also questioning his egotism and self-claimed genius. Others have investigated the artist’s darker sides, scrutinizing his physical and psychological abuse of women or the role that his art played in the appropriation of African visual tropes by Western practitioners. Still others have found another solution: the complex superimposition of distinctive Picasso images onto present-day struggles, with his works responding to the Spanish Civil War and the Korean War acting as lodestars for many in recent decades.
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To take stock of the many ways artists have responded to Picasso’s art, persona, and legacy, we offer a sampler of 23 contemporary works on the subject, plus two earlier works by women who knew Picasso intimately and were regarded as simply his muses, though they produced art of their own. The works, some of which figure in various presentations mounted this year to mark the 50th anniversary of Picasso’s death, are presented below in chronological order.
Source: artnews.com