Picasso & the Camera

[miliosr]

I bought the catalog to the Picasso & the Camera exhibit at the Gagosian Gallery in New York. An entire section of the catalog is devoted to Picasso's first wife, the Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova who was a member of the Ballets Russe. The catalog contains many, many photos, not only of Olga and Picasso, but of various Ballets Russe personalities as well (i.e. Diaghilev, Cecchetti, etc.)

[dirac]

Thanks for the heads-up, miliosr.

[miliosr]

The Olga chapter in the catalog is interesting because most of the photos are from the period when all concerned were happy and the Ballets Russe was flush with success. Obviously, the Picassos happiness didn't last, which makes the photos bittersweet in retrospect.

[Quiggin]

Thanks too. It's been curated by John Richardson, Picasso's biographer, who also did a show of the wonderfully crazy late paintings, Mosqueteros, at the same gallery, Gagosian. Somewhat changed the way the late work was regarded.

Towards the end of the Olga years Picasso mixed surrealism and late cubism in an important scherzo-like painting called The Dance / Three Dancers. It's something of a farewell to the Diaghilev years, and Olga is supposed to be one of the three dancers. I always wondered if the brown and white costume at the right was based on the one in Afternoon Faun in the twenties production -

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/picasso-the-three-dancers-t00729

[sandik]

I always wondered if the brown and white costume at the right was based on the one in Afternoon Faun used in the twenties -

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/picasso-the-three-dancers-t00729

Oooh, fun question! Don't know if you could actually say so, but it's a treat to conjecture!

[miliosr]

I have the catalog to the Mosqueteros show and it really did put the late-period Picassos in a new perspective. You could see how Picasso was responding, not only to his own work, but to the Old Masters he held in high regard.