views, reviews and previews ar t


made cut-outs. And he painted. Te show gives good examples of


PICASSO The Mediterranean Years (1945–1962)


Gagosian Galery 6–24 Britannia Street, London Until 28 August


Admission free IN THE achingly


trendy spaces


alongside Grays Inn Road there is a gallery which will be


forever New


York. Its ceilings are high. Its walls are gray (or grey). Te girls are very prety and it’s not obvious which door you go in at. Here money and bohemianism talk. New Directions readers should visit, esecially if they have the money to buy any of the exhibits when they reach New York. But they should visit anyway because


this show, put together by Picasso’s grandson, Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, and his biographer, John Richardson, is a fascinating and stimulating display of late works, many not previously seen outside


the extended family’s


own collections. Te hundred or so items are Picasso’s Picassos. Tey are Mediterranean works, produced in the south, in the old perfume factory at Vallauris, in his great houses of La Californie and Vauvenargues, and their colour and vibrancy are a burst of life aſter the gray Parisian works of the war years, some of which are currently on display at Tate Liverpool. Te years aſter the war were a very


fruitful time for Picasso. He rubbed shoulders with poets, was fêted at bull fights and surrounded by critics, hangers on, friends, admirers, mistresses and children. All of these appear in the exhibition. He worked in sculpture and ceramics. He used almost every printing technique known to man. He


all these different forms and – well, some are beter than others. Te sculpture ‘Petite fille sautant à la corde’ is wonderful. Te girl is airborne above her skipping rope, in a way which is both light and strong. Te sculpture works


in the round,


almost unconsciously. And the in-between age of the girl is caught with her thin legs, clunky shoes and bunched up hair. It is a humorous piece which is so well done you don’t notice how well done it is. Around it are other sculptures and some paintings of children, which do tip over into the mawkish. Another


good


sculpture is ‘Le guenon et son petit’, unfortunately


behind glass, where


the monkey is made up of all sorts of odd bits, which is fun and remarkably monkey-like. Tat sense of fun can also be seen in a large pastel-coloured oil of a man floundering in the water – this is an exhibition in which visitors should be laughing, though nobody was when I was there. Perhaps they were inhibited by the gallery’s demands on self-regard and financial standing. No such inhibitions


with Picasso. Or inhibitions full-stop by the look of the many paintings of round- eyed, big bosomed women – did the man ever sleep? His generous appreciation of


the female form


also shows in the cut- outs and the ceramics. Tere are a lot of these. Te most interesting are the red and black wares which are a vigorous reworking of the Ancient Greek tradition. In parallel with the National Gallery’s recent exhibition, ‘Picasso: Challenging the Past’, this show


brings together a number of Picasso’s works which challenge, not always too successfully, those of Delacroix and Velázquez. But always there is in these works a sense of vigorous conversation with and a real appreciation for his predecessors – Picasso was, aſter all, a Victorian, supremely self-confident but profoundly traditional. Te late works of Picasso don’t have


the searing quality of ‘Guernica’ or the rage and sadness of the soon-to-be- discarded mistresses. Te paintings aren’t particularly innovative. Tey will irritate the prudish and the correct. But there is life and humour and consummate technique and wit. And the prodigious output gives substance to the machismo and the bull-fighting. Like a modern rap singer, Picasso gets away with some very old-fashioned atitudes towards women by sheer force of fame and, in his case, of talent and personality, a personality currently very much in residence in WC1. Te gallery design will be imitated,


and should be, because it makes seeing the works easy and a pleasure.


Owen Higgs b ook s


BY WHAT AUTHORITY? Robert Hugh Benson Once & Future Books 540pp, pbk


0 9729821 1 6, £20.99 IT IS the reign of the


first Elizabeth. In Great Keynes Our Lady’s statue was smashed and the vestments burned on the green but the faith they expressed lived on. As Rector of Horsted


Keynes it was inevitable I would read a copy of


convert priest Robert Hugh Benson’s novel By What Authority? about the English Reformation. Te timing in the end was salutary for me in the run up to July 2010 General Synod. Plus ça


July 2010 ■ newdirections ■ 29


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