For almost a year, the Musée national Picasso-Paris brought together students, researchers, museum staff and cultural professionals on a monthly basis, to discuss and study the contemporary reception of Picasso's work, and also, more broadly, the role of museums and artists in the apprehension and growing attention paid to certain social issues. These lectures were broadcast as part of the Grandes Traversées d'été series on France Culture during the summer of 2023.
Pablo Picasso, a key figure in modern art and popular culture, is, like many others today, being called into question by current social issues ranging from sexism to the representation of violence in art, from politics to cultural appropriation.
In keeping with its mission - to present, study and transmit works of art to the public - the Musée national Picasso-Paris has decided to take up these issues, to study, question and debate them, within the framework of a restricted seminar of 11 sessions, the aim of which is to identify areas of reflection for the museum's teams, players in the art world and the general public.
This moment of reflection is all the more essential in 2023, the year of the "Picasso Celebration 1973-2023", a major event organized by the Musée Picasso, which has brought together some forty renowned institutions to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the artist's death and to examine his work and legacy through 43 exhibitions, mainly in France, Spain and the United States.
Eight sessions of this seminar, recorded with the help of France Culture, a partner in this cycle, were broadcast during the Grandes Traversées de l'Été 2023 and are available on the Radio France app.
The Musée Picasso is offering three previously unpublished sessions on its website, accessible at the bottom of the page.
BROADCAST PROGRAM
Should we separate the work from the author?
Guests: Éric de Chassey (Director, INHA); Laure Murat (historian and writer, Qui annule quoi? : sur la cancel culture, Paris, éditions du Seuil, 2022)
From biography to historiography. Methodological issues
Guests: Laurence Madeline (chief curator, Marie-Thérèse Walter & Pablo Picasso. Biographie d'une relation, Paris, Scala, 2022.); Julie Verlaine (professor of contemporary history at the University of Tours and co-director of the journal Sociétés et Représentation
Guests: Emilie Bouvard (Director of Collections at the Giacometti Foundation, "Olga Picasso modèle, une révolution domestique", 2017); Damien Delille (Université Lyon 2, Le troisième genre : androgynie et trouble de la masculinité dans les arts visuels au passage du XXe siècle, 2015); Peter Read ("Picasso et le carnet de Dinard, entre Eros et Thanatos", 1999)
Guests: Marie-Laure Bernadac (honorary curator, curator of Féminin/Masculin, le sexe de l'art, 1995); Miriam Cahn (artist)
Picasso's political commitment
Invités : Annie Cohen-Solal (Distinguished Professor, Bocconi University, Milan, Un étranger nommé Picasso, 2021) ; Frédéric Gros (philosophe, Désobéir, 2017)
Art and violence / Reason and unreason
Guests: Laurence Bertrand Dorléac (art historian, president of the Fondation des Sciences Politiques; L'Ordre sauvage: violence, dépense et sacré dans l'art des années 1950-1960, Gallimard, 2004); Raphaël Gaillard (director of the Pôle Hospitalier Universitaire Hôpital Sainte-Anne; Un coup de hache dans la tête, Grasset, 2022)
Post-colonial analysis of Picasso: can we speak of "cultural appropriation"?
Guests: Cécile Godefroy (Director, Centre d'études Picasso, Musée national Picasso-Paris; Françoise Vergès (decolonial feminist activist, political scientist and independent curator, Programme de désordre absolu. Decolonizing the Museum, 2023)
What role can museums play in addressing social issues ?
Guests: Laurence des Cars (President-Director, Musée du Louvre); Cécile Debray (President, Musée national Picasso- Paris); Jean-Luc Murray (Director General, Musée national des Beaux-Arts du Québec)
NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN SCREENINGS
The painter and his model
Guests: Nathalie Bondil (director of the Institut du Monde Arabe, curator of "Fernande Olivier et Pablo Picasso, dans l'intimité du Bateau-Lavoir", at the Musée de Montmartre); Camille Morineau (founder of AWARE, Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhbitions)
Post-colonial analysis of Picasso
Guests: Philippe Dagen (Primitivisme 2: une guerre moderne, 2021); Malick Ndiaye (Musée Théodore Monod, Dakar)
Controversies. What answers?
Guests: Gisèle Sapiro (sociologist, Peut-on dissocier l'œuvre de l'auteur, 2020); Thomas Schlesser (Director of the Hartung-Bergman Foundation, L'art face à la censure, 2011)