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CURATOR'S STATEMENT
Terence Maloon, Curator of Special Exhibitions, Art Gallery of New South Wales
The motivation for this exhibition came from the fact that we have in the permanent collection one of Picasso's late paintings. It is a work that has never had a context which would enable our Gallery public to assess its quality and significance. To situate that work in the context of Picasso's last decades meant mapping the scope of his late works. One very quickly realises that his work in this period falls into distinct categories, governed by subject, style, place, or by biographical events. [See footnote*]
We started seriously thinking about the feasibility of this exhibition for the Art Gallery of New South Wales 3 years ago. It involved an extensive team effort of Gallery staff across all departments as well as very extensive networking with Picasso experts, Museum curators, art-dealers, and private collectors.
I wanted the exhibition to reflect the intensity, the passion, the aggression and the rebellious spirit that Picasso was able to sustain right through his life. That is something absolutely dazzling and inspiring. I didn't want to side-track people's attention by adding more media to the exhibition. His work in sculpture and ceramics dwindled anyway and became non-existent as he approached his eighties. So it is the two-dimensional work that we are considering. Picasso was so incredibly prolific that in a sense one has to save him from his own prodigality- just to put the strongest work first. A curator offers an interpretation, an interpretation that should be advantageous to the artist. There is no point going to all the trouble and expense of acquiring loans without making an artist look as good as possible.
The exhibitions that are possible for us to mount in Australia, despite the fact that some people like to call them blockbusters, are inevitably much more condensed and miniaturised than the kinds of survey exhibitions one sees in London, Paris and New York. However, this forces a clarity of purpose regarding the selection of works and the organisation of the exhibition. Every work requires companionship, sympathy and enhancement by its context. The limitations can sharpen our focus and give weight to individual works, whereas abundance is not always advantageous particularly in the case of an artist as prolific and untidy as Picasso.
For me as a fourteen year old, I discovered Picasso as a non-conformist, as a free thinker, as a symbol of liberty, and the fact that I pursued an involvement with art was due in no small part to the liberating virtues of Picasso's creativity. Gertrude Stein's account of Picasso in her book The autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is still the most subversive piece of writing I ever read.
* Footnote:
Picasso: The Last Decades includes 85 artworks - 31 paintings and 54 works on paper - from 1953 to 1973, the last two decades in Picasso's life.
The organisation of the artworks in the exhibition follows the following thematic categories:
- Crisis
- Jacqueline
- The Studio at La Californie
- Old Master variations
- Travesties
- Artist and model
- Memory and desire
- Last works
> See Exhibition Floorplan | 
