Conferences "Picasso. Sculptures"

Conference with the curators of the exhibition "Picasso. Sculptures" 

Tuesday 30 March 2016

Speakers : Virginie Perdrisot, Curator in charge of sculptures, the personal collection and paintings (1922-1937), and exhibition curator Cécile Godefroy, Art historian and associate curator

The conference will examine the notion of reproducibility in Picasso's sculptural work using a selection of sculptures, such as the plaster casts and bronze casts of Tête de Femme (Head of a woman; Fernande, 1909), the series of six Verres d'absinthe (Glasses of absinthe; 1914)  brought together exclusively for this exhibition - the cement casts from the International Exhibition of Art and Technology in Modern Life held in 1937, created from the Boisgeloup plaster casts, and the bronze Baigneurs (Bathers) from 1956. It was the public display of these items and their depiction in the art press, publications and catalogues very early on that earned the artist's sculptures their initial international reputation, before the "Hommage à Pablo Picasso" retrospective in 1966-1967 at the Petit Palais. 

Apollinaire Monument dialogue

Friday 7 June 2016

Conference on the Monument to Apollinaire, with Peter Read, Cécile Godefroy and Virginie Perdrisot. 

After being commissioned by the Société des Amis de Guillaume Apollinaire to design a monument in homage to the dead poet in May 1921, Picasso produced several proposals in the form of models intended to be transposed into a monument. The "Picasso. Sculptures" exhibition highlights the different proposals submitted to the committee by the artist, including the iron wire sculptures produced in 1928. Assortments of straight, angular and curved lines made out of iron wire soldered at specific points, these sculptures entitled Figures were created from a series of sketches where in a constellation of interconnected points the figure interacts with the space. In these sculptures that embrace empty space and transparency, like "drawings in space", Picasso seems to be echoing the aspiration of the Bird of Benin, the artist's double in Apollinaire's short story, Le Poète assassiné (The Poet Assassinated): "I must sculpt him a profound statue out of nothing, like poetry and glory". A large-scale version of one of these models was produced in 1985 for the opening of the Musée Picasso and will once again be visible in the museum's garden from the opening of the "Picasso. Sculptures" exhibition on 8 March 2016. Speakers: Cécile Godefroy, art historian and associate curator of the exhibition "Picasso. Sculptures" Virginie Perdrisot, Curator in charge of sculptures, the personal collection and paintings (1922-1937), Curator of the exhibition "Picasso. Sculptures" Peter Read, lecturer, University of Kent. Amongst his publications: Picasso and Apollinaire: The Persistence of Memory, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2008.