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Friday, March 19, 2010

The Password is "Pablo"


Hey, look at these rad new Pablo buttons, created especially for Picasso and Avant-Garde in Paris. We're kinda obsessed with them. Here's the deal if you want to get one: Anyone who says the word "Pablo" when buying a ticket or membership to the Museum scores a free button. FYI, we only printed up a limited number, so one per person. Share the news, spread the Picasso love.  

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Phanatical About Picasso

Check out the Phillies "Phanatic" on the steps of the Museum, leading into the Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris exhibition. The feathery green creature's likeness visited us as part of a cool public art project.  To learn more, go to www.visitphilly.com/phanatic.

Go Phillies. Go Picasso.  

Photo by M. Edlow for GPTMC

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Collage Education

Our latest Picasso blogger, Jaime Bramble, is the Copywriter/Web Content Manager at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She's also pursuing her MLA degree at the University of Pennsylvania, with concentrations in Creative Writing and South African Studies. Her fiction has appeared in A Capella Zoo, Cantaraville, Slow Trains, and others.

I always thought collage was the stuff of middle school art classes and ambitious scrap-booking projects - a fun way to pass a lonely afternoon, a valid excuse to purchase large pots of glue and Crayola markers well into adulthood - but nothing that anyone would ever really take too seriously. And I always thought that was a shame, because I can make a mean collage. After visiting Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris, the latest blockbuster exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, however, I realized there may be hope for a starving collage-ist like me yet. This show totally challenged, as in, blew to smithereens - all my earlier ideas about the medium.



In these seemingly chaotic, yet in fact impeccably arranged, works of art (by Picasso as well as his contemporaries Georges Braque and Juan Gris), fruit and wineglasses mingle with violins and newspaper clippings of the day - testament of a world on the brink of and in the midst of war. Not only that, this was a time when everything was becoming more and more industrialized. It's highly possible that as these works were being created, nothing seemed certain and nothing felt real. When you think of it that way, it's all quite moving. Then, as now: collage is a means of expression, identification, catharsis, and preservation.



The collages on view feature objects cut and thoughtfully pasted as well as drawn by hand, a juxtaposition that plays with ideas of dimension as well as illusion and reality. Torn strips of paper and images of everyday objects come together to create bold geometry and subtle shadows. It begs the question: What is really worth remembering? When we are torn to shreds, how can we piece ourselves together into a more meaningful whole?

Photo (top): Still Life: The Table, Juan Gris, 1914; photo (bottom): Musical Forms, Georges Braque, 1918. All courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Picasso Games in the Galleries

The Education department at the Museum recently created a nifty "Family Guide" for the Picasso and the Avant-Garde exhibition. It's full of simple but thought-provoking games and teasers (try this one: which two paintings are most alike and different in the Cubism Salon?). You can find the guide on your way into the exhibition. Although it's technically geared toward kids, it's actually a lot of fun for those who've graduated from coloring books too, we realized. So we decided to post a couple puzzlers here. Think of them as modern-day versions of parlor games.


GAME #1: Go to the Americans in Paris gallery. One of these pictures was inspired by Cubism and one was not. Which is the Cubist work?




GAME #2. Find the Picasso and Surrealism gallery. Surrealist artists made images inspired by their dreams, feelings, and ideas that popped into their minds.... Sometimes they asked their friends to title their artwork for them. Look at the long wall of paintings with light-brown backgrounds. Can you give these paintings new titles? What would you name them?

Photo (top): Pertaining to Yachts and Yachting, Charles Sheeler, 1922; photo (bottom): Bullfight, Pablo Ruiz y Picasso, 1934. All courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Monday, March 15, 2010

What Inspires Me: Picasso and Cubism

Meet Emily Heller, a Picasso Posse blogger from Temple University, who tells us why the fragmented planes of Cubism are so cool.

I saw a Picasso exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City with my parents when I was seven. As a child, being bustled around by adults in a crowded gallery was not my idea of a fun day out, however the Picasso paintings were forever burned in my memory.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art's Picasso exhibition has many paintings which fall into the Cubism category, including the ever-popular, “Man with a Guitar.” All of these paintings are representative of the "avant-garde" feeling taking place in Paris during Picasso's time...



I wondered, what does "avant-garde" really mean? Technically, it's a military term that means "advance guard." But today, it's a term that has come to be used for any members of a group (artists, writers, etc.) who push the boundaries in their field. Seeing the works in the exhibition reminds me of how Piasso pioneered the Cubism movement, pushing the boundaries of painting off the canvas. As one looks at the pieced-together compositions, the scattered images come together and form a single imprint that seems to last forever.

Photo (top): courtesy of Emily Heller; photo (center): Man with a Guitar, Pablo Ruiz y Picasso, courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.