Newspaper Article

VISUAL ARTS: Playful Picasso Ceramics show the master's lighter side

PAMELA BLUME LEONARD

2006

Overview

[Pablo Picasso] was a great borrower from art history. Among the finest pieces in this exhibition are two pitchers, both bottleneck globes, each with a single arcing tubular handle high on the pot. They are reminiscent of Minoan forms, but the surfaces are very Picasso. Smiling faces with huge green eyes, broad black noses and various stripes and dots nearly cover the white slip on the pots. Form and surface never converge but constantly tussle for primacy, as happens in most of Picasso's ceramics. Picasso's ceramics do not yet have a secure place in his larger body of work. Nor has any significant impact on contemporary ceramics emerged. When Picasso's interest in figurative ceramics was at its height, the strongest influences on studio pottery were abstract expressionism and Japanese folk pottery. These art forms favored a masculine flavor, and so did Picasso. However, at a time in his life when he was surrounded with his children and living with a young paramour, Picasso turned to pottery, an art associated with home and, in his life, with vacation. He enjoyed the freedom this \"lesser\" medium offered a master painter, and he left us with playful objects to ponder lightly and enjoy immensely.

• Publisher: Atlanta Journal Constitution, LLC
• Subject: Art exhibits / Picasso, Pablo (1881-1973) / Visual artists