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Visitors to Picasso’s new studio on rue Schoelcher in 1913 were greeted with quite a sight. “The whole studio seemed to be bristling with Picassos. All the bits of wood and frame had become like his pictures,” wrote Vanessa Bell in a letter to Duncan Grant, a fellow member of the Bloomsbury group. In the jumble of works on view, it was hard to tell what was art and what was soon to be art. Collage clippings were scattered on the desk and paintings were stacked against the walls. The room also held a still-life construction: a cardboard guitar, placed upon semi-circular cardboard tabletop, with some faux bois (fake wood) wallpaper behind.

This guitar, along with another one made of sheet metal in 1914 (which Picasso himself gave to the museum in the 1970s), are the inspiration for "Picasso: Guitars 1912-1914", a new show at New York's Museum of Modern Art (it opens on February 13th). In 2005 the aforementioned cardboard tabletop that belongs with the cardboard guitar was rediscovered in the MoMA basement, this exhibition marks the first time they are shown together, and also includes a variety of collages, ‘constructions’, drawings, photographs and paintings that follow similar themes.   read more »

New York City’s 125^th Street, Harlem’s unofficial “Main Street”, once served as a de facto showcase of African-American culture, lined with iconic institutions such as the Apollo Theatre. The city’s construction craze has edged out most of these haunts, rendering Harlem's Studio Museum a rarity. In the last four decades, the museum has become known for offering one of the city's most coveted artist-in-residence programmes.

Designed for emerging artists of African or Latin descent, this programme awards a $20,000 fellowship to three emerging artists, a materials budget of approximately $1,000 and, most precious of all, a spacious, centrally located studio for one year. The curators, who look for artists at a critical turning point in their careers, seem to have a knack for spotting talent. Previous grantees include Chakaia Booker, David Hammons, Kerry James Marshall, Wangechi Mutu, Nadine Robinson and Kehinde Wiley, many of whom have gone on to make names for themselves in the art world.   read more »

I FINALLY made my way to MoMA to catch the Richard Serra retrospective (which has been extended for another two weeks until September 24th). There is something remarkable about his grand, steel undulations. These enormous, rusty, whirly tributes to the beauties of industry fold over and in on themselves, creating wonderfully unexpected spaces to walk around and through.

But it is depressing to take in works as staggering as "Sequence", "Band" and "Torqued Torus Inversion" (all made in 2006) in a space as sterile as a museum gallery.  read more »