Picasso: Tête-à-tête (Gagosian's Final Show at its Flagship Location)

[MitchW]

Anyone who is even a minor Picasso fan should run, not walk, to this stunning show. Mostly drawn from the artist's estate, some pieces are being seen for the very first time in public, others (privately held) not having been seen for years. And it's a good stop on the way to The Met.

[bloviatrix]

I remember that sculpture from the MOMA show in 2016.

[MitchW]

10 hours ago, bloviatrix said:

I remember that sculpture from the MOMA show in 2016.

Yes, in trying to find out a little lore about it, I think it's in a private collection at this point...

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With this sculpture, Picasso managed to solve a problem that had been haunting him for many years; creating a sculpture that didn’t touch the ground. He wanted to defy the laws of gravity that ordinarily limited sculptors. Picasso found the solution by accident when he was watching a child playing with a skipping rope. The second the child jumped, when the rope hit the ground; that’s the moment he decided to represent. As you can see, the little girl is floating over the rope supporting her. But the rope is in fact a bent iron tube that supports the weight of the work. Picasso used assemblage to create this figure. This technique brings together objects from everyday life, removed from their initial function, as well as ready-mades, directly incorporated into the final work. If you look closely, you’ll see that the body of this Little Girl Jumping Rope is made up of a wicker basket, but she also has real shoes, mischievously placed on the wrong feet. Working with plaster allowed Picasso to associate these different elements and to vary the textural effects such as the little girl’s hair, obtained by pressing the material onto corrugated cardboard.

Above is from Musee Picasso, in Paris. And from MoMA:

Pablo Picasso. Little Girl Jumping Rope.
Vallauris, 1950–[54]. Bronze. Private collection

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With Little Girl Jumping Rope, Picasso came close to accomplishing the impossible. He managed to make a sculpture that almost doesn’t touch the ground and that defies gravity.

To make this sculpture, Picasso began by asking an iron monger in the Southern French town of Vallauris to create a rectangular base for him and to attach to that a curved piece of iron tubing that rose to a height of 3 or 4 feet and that was in the shape that a jump rope would make when it touched the ground. And all of the other major components of this sculpture are attached to that single piece of curving iron tubing.

When you look at Little Girl Jumping Rope you can see that she is, like many of Picasso’s other early 1950s assemblages, comprised from a wonderful array of found or foraged or scavenged objects. His partner at the time, Francoise Gilot, recalled that on his daily walks to the studio, he would often stop to go through the towns dump heaps or even would rummage through trash bins looking for materials to include in his works. And so among his finds that made it into Little Girl Jumping Rope, you can see, for instance, that her torso is comprised of a basket and her face is made from a discarded, oval-shaped chocolate box.

Although Little Girl Jumping Rope is not a portrait in any sense of the word, it is a wonderful reminder that in 1950, the year Picasso began making this work, he was once again a new father, his young daughter Paloma was born in 1949.

 

Edited May 25 by MitchW

[Wilfrid]

Made it yesterday. I would only add that the curation is ingenious. Rather than adhering to any chronology, the show repeatedly gathers two or three pieces addressing a similar subject and shows the dramatically different styles Picasso could take in approaching them.

[MitchW]

27 minutes ago, Wilfrid said:

Rather than adhering to any chronology, the show repeatedly gathers two or three pieces addressing a similar subject and shows the dramatically different styles Picasso could take in approaching them.

Yes, and based on how Picasso wanted his pieces exhibited in a show which took place (I think) in 1937.

[Wilfrid]

Indeed yes. Good to see that Paloma was involved in organizing the show and look at those charming paintings of her as a child.

I think this is on until September, so hope to go again.