At Musée national Picasso-Paris, British designer Paul Smith led a three floor homage exhibition to the work of the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso on the fiftieth anniversary of his death
A modern lens on Pablo Picasso’s work
Known for his appreciation of color, his creative spirit and his contemporary aesthetic, designer Paul Smith led the artistic direction of the exhibition Picasso celebration: the collection in a new light along with Cécile Debray, president of the museum and heritage curator Joanne Snrech.
Showcasing the collection’s masterpieces, the exhibition «is an invitation to rediscover all of Picasso’s creative fields, through the eye of a great contemporary creator», explains Debray.
Picasso’s personal studios and Musée national Picasso’s collection
From painting and sculpture to drawing, engraving and ceramics, the exhibition presents a selection of art pieces and items coming from Picasso’s personal studios as well as from the museums’ own collection. «I hope what I’ve done is to approach it in a less conventional way – that is interesting for younger audiences and audiences that are not too knowledgeable about the work of this great master. It’s a more spontaneous and instinctive approach», explains Smith.
Underlining the relevance of Picasso’s work today, viewing his work through a modern and current lens, Paul Smith and his team put together a visual experience paying homage to the artist who pioneered cubism.
A colorful curation: three floors of the Hôtel Salé in Paris
«I have little academic knowledge of Picasso, so the project is about visual and spontaneous associations», explains the designer. It is true that the exhibition, which spans on three floors of the Hôtel Salé, is filled with colorful wallpapers, striped carpets and wall collages.
After entering a first room honoring Picasso’s 1942 Bull’s Head — a found object artwork made out of bicycle pieces — through an installation of multiple seats and handlebars, the viewer is plunged into a room covered with Vogue front covers from the fifties. This room illustrates young Picasso’s humor and love for caricature.
When aged thirteen the painter had the habit of drawing grotesque images on fashion magazine pages, and even created his own satirical magazines. As a sort of opposite mirror, the penultimate room of the exhibition is filled with the posters of the hundreds of solo exhibitions that were devoted to Picasso along his life.
Picasso’s blue period executed by Paul Smith
For Picasso’s blue period — a melancholic style of painting he developed after the death of a close friend — the room is painted in dark blue and features an autoportrait on a blue background.
«What is interesting is that by choosing me to design this display, the museum gets a different, more lateral approach to showing the master’s work. Generally speaking, the work I’ve seen by Picasso has been placed on a wall with little else around it, in what I would imagine is quite a traditional way», said the designer.
A shared love for stripes and Breton shirt
In the thirties, Picasso became obsessed with stripes motifs. In the portrait of his muse Dora Maar, red blue and yellow stripes are covering the walls behind her, in the Portrait of Jacqueline Roque with her hands crossed, the women wear a yellow stripe ensemble.
Sharing a love for objects, dress and playfulness, Picasso and Smith’s visions sometimes converge, and stripes are one of those areas, as it is also one of Paul Smith brand’s signatures. In addition, in 1952 French photographer Robert Doisneau took portraits of Picasso wearing a striped Breton shirt, setting in stone the association of the Spanish painter and the Breton motif.
Those images became so famous, they got stuck in the collective imagination and even inspired other artists such as Congolese painter Chéri Samba, in one of his 1997 paintings featuring Picasso wearing a red striped shirt, personifying the archetype of Western artists.
Regarding those rooms’ curation, the designer chose to cover the four walls of the first room with colorful hand painted stripes and for the second one, hung dozens of Breton shirts on the ceiling.
Musée Picasso in Paris
Picasso’s source of inspiration is also something that the British designer wanted to highlight in this show. From Iberian art — that he first discovered at the Musée du Louvre— Roman sculpture or the arts of Africa and Oceania, Picasso had a personal art collection. He loved ritual objects, valued their radical aesthetic and part of his collection is now kept at the Musée Picasso in Paris.
Contemporary international artists: Obi Okigbo and Mickalene Thoma
Throughout the exhibition, works by contemporary international artists are also displayed, aiming to open up a new and more modern interpretation of the Spanish master’s work.
Brussels-based Nigerian artist Obi Okigbo’s painting is placed in front of Picasso’s African and Oceanian artifacts highlighting «the permanence of this essential link between art and use that captivated Picasso, as well as his ambition to reconcile tradition and modernity», explains the curators.
American visual artist Mickalene Thomas’ series on African-American civil rights and the Black Lives Matter movement are put in conversations with Picasso’s paintings made in response to the Spanish Civil War — such as the most famous Guernica — or the still lifes with dark colors, animal corpses or human skulls he painted during the Second World War.
The exhibition Picasso celebration: the collection in a new light is on view from the seventh of March until the twenty-seventh of August.
Musée Picasso x Paul Smith
On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Spanish painter Pablo Picasso’s death, the eponymous museum located in Hôtel Salé in Paris, invited British designer Paul Smith to lead an commemorative exhibition celebrating the impact Picasso had on the 20th century.
