Audio Photo Essay
Inside Houston's highly-anticipated Picasso show: Expert delves deep to give exclusive insights
Feb 21, 2013 | 1:04 pm
As far as art exhibitions go, the most profound are rooted in a simple idea. Picasso Black and Whiteat the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston fits that bill.
___ A new modernism suffused Picasso's style in the 1960s, a happier time for the artist now married to his second wife, Jacqueline Roque [http: /en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqueline_Roque], and living near Cannes. Reclining Woman Reading isn't a portrait of Roque, but a tribute to the great sleeping nudes of his predecessors like Titian's Venus of Urbino [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Urbino] or Édouard Manet's Olympia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympia_(painting)]. Except this contemporary goddess is reading a paperback book in all her glory, supported by an avant garde lounger.
Photo courtesy of © 2013 Estate of Pablo Picasso Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
___ A new modernism suffused Picasso's style in the 1960s, a happier time for the artist now married to his second wife, Jacqueline Roque [https: /en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqueline_Roque], and living near Cannes. Reclining Woman Reading isn't a portrait of Roque, but a tribute to the great sleeping nudes of his predecessors like Titian's Venus of Urbino [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Urbino] or Édouard Manet's Olympia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympia_(painting)]. Except this contemporary goddess is reading a paperback book in all her glory, supported by an avant garde lounger.
Pablo Picasso, Reclining Woman Reading, 1960, oil on canvas, Collection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, museum purchase, The Benjamin J. Tillar Memorial Trust