Edited by Ann Temkin, Anne Umland. Text by Luise Mahler, Virginie Perdrisot.
The most in-depth account of the lives of Picasso’s sculptures
Published in conjunction with the first large-scale retrospective of Picasso's sculpture in the US since The Museum of Modern Art's historic show of 1967, Picasso Sculpture is a sweeping survey of the artist's profoundly innovative and influential work in three dimensions. Over the course of his long career, Picasso devoted himself to sculpture wholeheartedly, if episodically, using both traditional and unconventional materials and techniques. Unlike painting, in which he was formally trained and through which he made his living, sculpture occupied a uniquely personal and experimental status in Picasso's oeuvre. He kept the majority of his sculptures in his private possession during his lifetime, and it was only in the late 1960s that the public became fully aware of this side of his oeuvre. Picasso Sculpture presents approximately 150 sculptures--many of them captured in newly commissioned and sometimes multi-view photographs--alongside a selection of works on paper and photographs. Organized into chapters that correspond to distinct periods during which Picasso devoted himself to sculpture, the publication features an introduction by the exhibition curators as well as a richly illustrated documentary chronology focusing on the sculptures included in the exhibition. A comprehensive bibliography and list of historic exhibitions related to Picasso's work in sculpture closes the volume, advancing the understanding of Picasso's practice and lifelong commitment to constant reinvention.
Ann Temkin is The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Anne Umland is The Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Curator of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA.
Luise Mahler is Assistant Curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Virginie Perdrisot is Curator of Sculpture and Ceramics at the Musée national Picasso, Paris.
Pablo Picasso, "Baboon and Young Vallauris" (1950-1), is reproduced from Picasso Sculpture.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
The New Yorker
Peter Schjeldahl
I came away from the exhibits...convinced that Picasso was more naturally a sculptor than a painter.
ARTnews
Anne Doran
thrilling
The New York Times
Roberta Smith
exceptional.... Topping my list is the Museum of Modern Art's "Picasso Sculpture"... Touch down at almost any point, and you'll learn something new.
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"Many exhibitions are good, some are great and a very few are tantamount to works of art in their own right—for their clarity, lyricism and accumulative wisdom," Roberta Smith wrote in her September New York Times review of Picasso Sculpture, going on to call MoMA's current "staggering… large, ambitious and unavoidably, dizzyingly peripatetic" blockbuster a "once in a lifetime event." The beautifully produced and copiously illustrated 300-page exhibition catalog is suitably remarkable, and we are proud to recommend it as one of our top Holiday Gift Books of 2015. Featured image is "Bull" (1958). continue to blog
Featured image is one of six bronze casts editioned under the name "Glass of Absinthe," which Pablo Picasso produced at a Paris foundry in 1914. "With 'Glass of Absinthe,' Picasso set himself the seemingly impossible task of representing in sculpture things that are transparent," according to Anne Umland, co-curator and editor of MoMA's current blockbuster, Picasso Sculpture. "These works take as their subject a glass and its liquid contents. The latter is identified as absinthe, a clear liqueur, by the artist's inspired decision to incorporate a real-life metal absinthe spoon into his work of art. The perforations in these found spoons constitute one form of transparency; the diffuse polka-dot patters that Picasso painted on some of the casts supply another; and the cuts he made into his glasses' paradoxically opaque contours, revealing their interior views, represent a third. Here the revolution announced by Picasso's decision to open up the volumes of his 'Guitar' to light and shadow, incorporating a space as a sculptural material, is taken a step further. His 'Glass of Absinthe' sculptures swallow up real objects, transforming them from things of use into elements worthy of contemplation. This operation would remain a constant in Picasso's sculpture practice, the result of his exceptional openness to the sculptural potential of objects in the world." continue to blog
In their introduction to Picasso Sculpture, MoMA curators Ann Temkin and Anne Umland write, "To the end, Picasso's sculpture represents in the extreme the reinvention that characterized his work in every medium. He changed the language of his painting throughout the decades, but paint and canvas remained a constant. In contrast, each return to sculpture brought a fresh start technically and materially. From the Cubist years onward, he questioned the definition of sculpture as even he himself had most recently defined it. The history of art includes pioneering sculptors—Constantin Brancusi to name just a one—who transformed nineteenth-century sculpture into that of the twentieth. But Picasso's radicality was of another order, one that must be considered in terms of revolution rather than evolution. Throughout his life, Picasso approached sculpture less as a sculptor than as an artist. In so doing, he was unburdened by any legacies of process and method and anticipated a present-day situation in which the boundaries have blurred between painting, sculpture and other genres." Featured image is "Head of a Woman" (1929-30), shot by Brassaï in 1943. continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.5 x 12 in. / 320 pgs / 300 color / 200 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $85.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $112.5 ISBN: 9780870709746 PUBLISHER: The Museum of Modern Art, New York AVAILABLE: 11/24/2015 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: Out of stock TERRITORY: NA ONLY
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Edited by Ann Temkin, Anne Umland. Text by Luise Mahler, Virginie Perdrisot.
The most in-depth account of the lives of Picasso’s sculptures
Published in conjunction with the first large-scale retrospective of Picasso's sculpture in the US since The Museum of Modern Art's historic show of 1967, Picasso Sculpture is a sweeping survey of the artist's profoundly innovative and influential work in three dimensions.
Over the course of his long career, Picasso devoted himself to sculpture wholeheartedly, if episodically, using both traditional and unconventional materials and techniques. Unlike painting, in which he was formally trained and through which he made his living, sculpture occupied a uniquely personal and experimental status in Picasso's oeuvre. He kept the majority of his sculptures in his private possession during his lifetime, and it was only in the late 1960s that the public became fully aware of this side of his oeuvre.
Picasso Sculpture presents approximately 150 sculptures--many of them captured in newly commissioned and sometimes multi-view photographs--alongside a selection of works on paper and photographs. Organized into chapters that correspond to distinct periods during which Picasso devoted himself to sculpture, the publication features an introduction by the exhibition curators as well as a richly illustrated documentary chronology focusing on the sculptures included in the exhibition. A comprehensive bibliography and list of historic exhibitions related to Picasso's work in sculpture closes the volume, advancing the understanding of Picasso's practice and lifelong commitment to constant reinvention.
Ann Temkin is The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Anne Umland is The Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Curator of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA.
Luise Mahler is Assistant Curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Virginie Perdrisot is Curator of Sculpture and Ceramics at the Musée national Picasso, Paris.
