Exhibition of the week
Picasso and Paper
Royal Academy, London W1 (020-7300 8090, royalacademy.org.uk). Until 13 April
Pablo Picasso was a compulsive draughtsman, said Rachel Campbell-Johnston in The Times. “I draw, like other people bite their nails,” he once explained, claiming that paper itself “could seduce him”. He wasn’t exaggerating: Picasso simply could not stop himself from collaging, reshaping or doodling on whatever materials came to hand: “invitation cards, book pages, letters and envelopes, wrapping paper, metro tickets and blotting pads” – all were canvases for his “fabulously creative” mind. This extraordinary new exhibition at the Royal Academy is the first to focus on the artist’s astonishingly inventive works on paper, tracing a chronological arc that takes us from the drawings of Picasso’s childhood to sketches made well into his 90s. Incorporating some 300 works – including rarely seen drawings, prints and collages, as well as sculptures, costume designs and photographs – the show casts an intimate light on Picasso’s “fantastically fertile career”, and “captures the vitality” of one of the 20th century’s greatest minds.
The best of these off-the-cuff sketches and experiments on paper are “stunning”, said Eddy Frankel in Time Out. From the “heartwrenching” etching The Frugal Meal, executed when Picasso was in his late teens, to the “stony faces” and muted palette of his
Rose Period, and his first, revolutionary experiments in the cubist style, “the work is a whirlwind of innovation”. Indeed, even a set of “animal cut-outs” created when he was just nine years old is remarkably accomplished. Yet for all of its “jaw-dropping moments of beauty”, the exhibition devotes far too much attention to technical details and feels too big by half, making for an “endless sprawl” of Picasso ephemera that could have been “at least three rooms smaller”.
Many exhibits here may seem less than spectacular, said Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph. A napkin torn into the shape of a skull, for instance, will be of interest to only “the most ardent Picasso-worshipper”. Nevertheless, even “seemingly throwaway” items – notes scrawled on hotel stationery, political cartoons drawn over newspapers, a “macabre” display of paper animals that Picasso created to cheer up his lover Dora Maar following the death of her pet dog – add to our knowledge of Picasso’s creative processes, demonstrating how even an ostensibly inane doodle could serve as a conduit to a radical new artistic idea. Throw in a number of studies for masterpieces including 1907’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and you have a genuine blockbuster. This is a “beautifully curated” show that is “full of surprises and delightful moments”.