The fifty years of the painter’s death continue to be celebrated here and there. In Paris, two exhibitions stand out for their thematic bias. The first, at the Picasso-Paris museum, sees Sophie Calle take over the four levels of the Hôtel Salé by summoning the memory of the Spanish master through one of these personal stories of which she has the secret and which, once again here , hits the mark. With the exception of a first work that she created at the age of 6 and which made her grandmother say that there was “a Picasso in the family”, the artist had not yet much to claim from a link with the painter, so she decided to “do without”.
Pablo, the object of this homage, therefore steps aside for the benefit of Sophie, not without a few Picassoian nods, like these miniature works that she exchanged with her artist friends, from Bertrand Lavier to Serena Carrone, hung on a wall. of 27.0824 square meters – the exact area of Guernica. From one floor to another, we find the visual artist’s favorite themes, such as disappearance, absence or the gaze: her “meager” personal relationship with Pablo’s work, supported by autobiographical memories, the inventory before the time of her own succession, exposing all of her assets in the manner of an auction, or the retrospective look in the form of a balance sheet that she takes on her artistic career. In short, this is an unexpected summary of her entire life that Sophie Calle has, as an emergency, titled It’s up to you, my darling.
Sophie Calle, “Child’s Drawing”.
/ © Sophie Calle/ ADAGP, Paris 2023
It is in collaboration with the same Picasso museum that is presented at the Center Pompidou Draw endlessly, the largest retrospective to date of the artist’s drawn and engraved production, with nearly 1000 works, under the aegis of curators Anne Lemonnier and Johan Popelard. To the tandem, we will add the name of the scenographer Jasmin Oezcebi, as her layout of the large gallery on the 6th floor is dizzying by offering multiple points of view and new perspectives, while providing a superb fluidity to the journey. There is no route, moreover, since the layout of the exhibition like a huge open stage, without chronological logic, allows you to move freely through the works and themes.
To be interested in the graphic production of the painter, who was also – we have brilliant confirmation here – a compulsive draftsman, is to immerse oneself in his thoughts, like “unrolling a sort of diary”, underline the curators. From youth to maturity, papers glued to figures drawn in a single stroke, like those accompanying the critical essay on the music of Jean Cocteau, The Rooster and the Harlequinfrom delicate pastel portraits to the violence of “crying heads”, preludes to Guernica.
Pablo Picasso, “Self-portrait” [Montrouge]1918.
/ © Succession Picasso 2023 Photo (C) RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / Mathieu Rabeau
At the heart of this astonishing system, the artist’s notebooks crystallize this vast field of experimentation – Picasso left nearly 200 of them, most of which remained unpublished for a long time. We find there, among other nuggets, the Red nudes in gouache or watercolor, witnesses of an intense creative fever which led, in 1907, to the shock of Ladies of Avignon.
It’s up to you, my darling, at the Picasso-Paris museum until January 7. Draw endlessly at the Center Pompidou until January 15.