He may have been the most important artist of the last century, but Pablo Picasso is not exempt from cancel culture. Half a century after the revered Spanish painter and sculptor died, there are calls for the “monstrous misogynist” and “cultural appropriator” to be be censored.
Picasso exhibitions in Paris (until August 27th) and Brooklyn (June 2nd to September 24th) are set to become battlegrounds in this debate.
The Guardian has compiled a range of views about the artist, including that of art critic Eliza Goodpasture:
Picasso’s brand of greatness is characterised by loudness, scale, grit, originality, celebrity and overall shock-and-awe value. It is also distinguished by a macho, lusty masculinity. His notorious cruelty and misogyny are arguably as famous as his paintings. Picasso’s life and art were made possible by the work of women: his wives and mistresses who cared for him and organised his life, and of course the models and muses who fill his paintings. These women could not have stood where he stood behind the canvas, in brothels and bars and on battlefields, thinking of nothing but work. The lurid radicality of his art rests on a wanton disregard for the humanity of the women he painted and slept with.
Even as other ‘great artists’ are beginning to be held to account, Picasso has clung on to his status as the most important, and most famous, artist of the 20th century. Genius transcends misogyny, apparently. It is impossible to separate Picasso’s work from his life, and equally impossible to escape the legacy of his enormous oeuvre. But we can escape the narrow definition of ‘great’ that limits the history of art to men like Picasso.
The canon is not fixed and unchangeable: it is constantly being re-evaluated. What if great art included work that is subtle, nuanced, quiet, small, challenging and complicated? Imagine if a great artist could be any gender, any race – or even a person who valued the humanity of others. Who else might be a household name?
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