Picasso and the masters
- from: 08.10.2008
- to: 02.02.2009
- In: Paris
Picasso and the masters
agenda
From October 8th, 2008, to February 2nd, 2009
The "Picasso and the masters" exhibition on show at the Grand Palais's national galleries claims to be the first such appraisal. Some 210 works have been brought together for the occasion from the most prestigious collections, both public and private, national and international.
Contrasting past and present, beyond stylistic changes and formal innovations, in an order combining chronological and thematic approaches, using Picasso's painting as its only guide, the exhibition presents: Greco, Vélasquez, Goya, Zurbarán, Ribera, Melendez, Poussin, Le Nain, Dubois, Chardin, David, Ingres, Delacroix, Manet, Courbet, Lautrec, Degas, Puvis de Chavannes, Cézanne, Renoir, Gauguin, Douanier Rousseau, Titien, Cranach, Rembrandt and Van Gogh. Spanish, French, Italian and German, these painters represent the multiple threads of a closely-woven pattern in which painting learns from painting.
An unprecedented pictorial cannibalism is at work in the approach of Picasso, who creates a system out of painting paintings.
In a break from the academic processes of transmission and reproduction of tradition - copying, paraphrasing, quoting - this new methodology places painting at the heart of knowledge of the world. Transposition, mimicry, subversion and adulteration are a few aspects of the strategy employed by Picasso towards his favourite painters. He also nourished the modern and contemporary creative modus operandi, on occasion also drawing it towards perverse duplication, irony and pastiche.
Of course the French presidency means that the exhibition's audioguide is available in the European Union's 23 official languages
- Updated: 10.10.2008
