PICASSO LOOKS DEATH IN THE EYE

Pablo Picasso

After reading John Richardson's biography of Pablo Picasso, Michael Lewis wrote for Slate that he felt "grateful to Art, not for the pleasure it affords the consumer, but for the outlet it offers the psychopath." That Picasso was a uniquely tormented man feels eerily evident in a show of around 100 of his late works at Gagosian Gallery in Manhattan. "Picasso: Mosqueteros" (musketeers) contains the end product of a prodigious and terrified soul.

Richardson, Picasso's biographer and friend, helped arrange the show. "He was trying to outwit death," he explained to the New York Times. "In this late body of work the eyes are nearly always Picasso's eyes." There are eyes everywhere. In "The Kiss" the off-kilter eyes of writhing lovers are directed at the viewer. They are the rolled-back eyes of a panicking horse, yet deeply sexual and consuming. These are not windows to the soul, but a way into the abyss.

In the austere atmosphere of Gagosian's Chelsea space ("Where are all the explanations?" asked one disgruntled patron), Picasso's constellations of works beckon in riotous colour. From a distance they have the vibrant look of stained glass. Sickly, decaying greens recede, while splotches of red aggressively spurt off the canvas. Among the prints, sticky black ink bleeds, like pages of a sinister and busy graphic novel.

In some ways his unravelling is not so different from the way he began. Both his early and late works feature kaleidoscopic, angry patches of colour (see "The Wait (Margot)" at the Museu Picasso). And he occasionally reveals his early technical mastery in Mosqueteros, employing realistic renditions of lights and shadow to make a finger push forward or a black eye glower in space.

The Mosqueteros themselves are perverted Rembrandt portraits. Drawn with a child-like hand, they appear anachronistic in their courtly attire, like clowns in funny hats from a long time ago. One gets the sense that this is how Picasso saw himself.

~ ARIEL RAMCHANDANI

Picture Credit: Matalyn (via Flickr)