Picasso and Chicago
CHICAGO — Sometimes it almost seems that at any time of the year, at some place in the world, there is always a show of Picasso’s work on display. Within the last 12 months in the United States alone, museum-goers could see works from Picasso’s residence in southern France, La Californie, at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City; an exhibition devoted to the Blue period, La Vie, at the Cleveland Art Museum; Picasso in Black and White at the Guggenheim in New York City; Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Philadelphia; and works from Paris’s Musee Picasso on loan at the Seattle Art Museum. As a self-confessed Picassoholic, I’ve seen some of these shows as well as many of the blockbuster Picasso-related events from the last twenty years (Picasso and Sculpture at the Tate in London, Matisse Picasso at New York’s MoMA). And so I feel confident in my assertion that Picasso and Chicago, which opened at the Art Institute of Chicago last week, stands in comparison with the best of them.
