Word: picassos
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Those who find it difficult to subtract four-digit numbers may wish to bring a calculator, or at least scratch paper, to the Museum of Fine Arts' exhibition "Picasso: the Early Years." Even easier, however, is to eavesdrop as visitors whisper to each other while subtracting 1881, the year of Picasso's birth, from the date of a painting's execution. The solutions are often unbelievably small...
...young artist does not automatically make them valuable masterpieces which stand on their own. If anything we might say that their art historical value depends not on their individual merit, but largely on the fact that they were created by one of the artists who later invented cubism. Had Picasso died in 1906, the date of the exhibition's last painting, we might question whether these same works would be hanging in the MFA today...
...earlier of these paintings, we see a young man in three-quarter profile looking out at us from beneath the shadow of his dark, unkempt, hair. Energetic brushstrokes define the facial features while his body melts off the canvas in a blur of brown. Yet despite the temerity of Picasso's mark making, we can't help but notice a sense of doubt or even fear in the artist's eyes. This effect is magnified in "Self-Portrait in a Wig," where Picasso's uneasy expression, heightened by his uncomfortably formal costume, belies the confidence of his hand...
This mingling of doubt and confidence persists as the exhibition progresses. We find a certain stylistic assurance within each painting, but not among the works as a whole. It's almost as if Picasso tries on a style and buys it completely until he finishes a painting only to abandon or modify that style before moving on to the next canvas. The show's label text aptly points to possible influences which include artists such as Monet, Munch, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, Cezanne and even Velasquez...
Worse, still, than losing a lover is losing a muse. Gently, lovingly, at other times with parasitic intention or vampiric intensity, men have turned to women for inspiration. F. Scott Fitzgerald had Zelda, Rodin had Camille Claudel, Picasso had a distaff palette; and Bob Dylan, one of the most intriguing, important, irascible figures in rock, had whom? On Time Out of Mind, his first CD of new, self-penned material in seven years and his most consistently rewarding album since the '70s, Dylan seems to be haunted by an imaginary, unnamed muse who has come and gone, leaving him loveless...