![]() Weirdly, it may be making its points too subtly and too ham-fistedly, sometimes in the same caption. It’s hard to think of a more on-the-nose counterpoint to Picasso’s deconstructed nudes, but it’s true that the exhibit doesn’t connect any explicit dots. Artnet, which has covered the show extensively, said that the feminist art seemed to have little to do with the Picassos on display, which seems false to me. The show closes with Mickalene Thomas’s odalisque Marie: Nude Black Woman Lying on a Couch. New York Times critic Jason Farago called the title “It’s Pablo-Matic” “so silly that I cannot even type it” and went on in that vein viciously. The main problem is that while the whole thing wouldn’t exist without Gadsby - they inspired it and helped Small and Morris select the art for it - their fame has overshadowed the exhibit’s intentions. The viewer is encouraged to chuckle at Gadsby’s captions, mostly one-liners mocking Picasso’s “attachment issues” and making cracks like, “Meta? I hardly know her.”īut it’s also a nuanced exhibit, with challenging and beautiful work by both Picasso and the non-male artists who’ve grappled with his legacy for the past 50 years. The foregrounding of Gadsby’s stated opinion of Picasso in their groundbreaking Netflix special, Nanette - “I hate Picasso” - can’t help but set the ground rules for any conversation surrounding the exhibit. It’s one of many museum exhibits worldwide honoring the 50th anniversary of Picasso’s death, but it’s the only one that takes on his unequivocal misogyny as its explicit topic, even as it showcases his work. But there’s a fly in the ointment: Hannah Gadsby, who co-curated the show with Brooklyn Museum curators Lisa Small and Catherine Morris. ![]() Mostly, it calls Picasso an asshole subtly, artfully, using the resources of the Brooklyn Museum’s feminist art collection as counterpoints to the Picasso paintings and drawings that accompany them. “Girls could not resist his stare and so Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole … not in New York,” the song goes. Walking through the Brooklyn Museum’s new exhibit “It’s Pablo-Matic,” the Jonathan Richman song “Pablo Picasso” kept running through my head, to the point where I couldn’t believe it wasn’t playing from loudspeakers. ![]() Photo-Illustration: Curbed Photos Getty Images ![]()
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