This is a great exhibition of Picasso’s best prints, it’s an outstanding show really and well patronised by the local people. But it is very easy to view each and every one of Picasso’s prints. The standout prints by Picasso within this show appear to be a period between 1904 – 1908, this was a time before his name became famous and his art turned into some sort of brand label, plus everything that seems to come with that and tends to brings the artist to a point of mediocrity within their artistic praxis.
Between 1904-1908 Picasso acquired a studio in the run down quarter in Montmartre, Paris called Bateau Lavior, it was cheap to run a studio, multi-ethnic and full of bohemian life, exactly the kind of cutting edge type of place an artist needs to exist in with their praxis.
Also within this particular period of Picasso’s praxis in Montmartre he and his fellow artists appeared to be fairly honest critic’s of each other artworks, and this was enhanced also be the fact the best paintings in the world at that time were hanging in the Louvre, plus close by in Galerie Durand- Ruel were the local artist of the day, including Pablo himself called the second Louvre because of the range of impressionist masters that were on sale there and which he always dropped in to see especially what Degas was painting this gave them a very good measure to what was good art and what was rubbish, unlike much that happens in art schools nowadays, were students put any old crap up and call it art and it is passed..
Within this bohemian multi cultural terrain of inner Paris, Picasso moved from rendering motifs about the dark recesses of Spanish religious painting to something more immediate, being the fringe circus entertainers that performed around Montmartre and who he befriended to get a personal insight into their vanishing culture, against the perceived modernism at the time.
Picasso’s prints on show around 1905 contain a sensitivity in observation about the human condition that is really wonderful to see, it like one can sense the now of poverty that seems to hang around Picasso’s drawn figures, like a dense weft of omnipresent misery, there is nothing romantic about this lifestyle, it is what it is a life in the arts, whether they be circus entertainers or fellow artists or friends.
There is something about these early prints by Picasso, maybe it is a sobriety and acuity of observation, uncluttered by fame and imbued with an immense desire to forge new motifs as a departure from his past Spanish subject matter. Nonetheless, whatever it is these images even by Picasso even though small, seem the most interesting within the show.
This is a fabulous exhibition and well worth of spending some considerable time viewing, plus Akashi is a really nice place to visit.
