Monographic Motifs: One Artist, One Theme 1900–1970

While Pablo Picasso’s (1881–1973) work is often seen through the lens of his diverse style and his powerful portrayal of subjects, the recurrent motif of black, white, and gray and the artist’s attachment to the drawn line have been less-recognized until now. Picasso Black and White demonstrates how the artist was continuously investigating, inventing, and drawing in somber and austere monochromatic tones throughout his career.

2 pm: Introduction

Presentations by Emerging Scholars

Building on the same methodological approach as the exhibition Picasso Black and White, this series of presentations by emerging scholars gathers together parallel modernist explorations of a particular formal or thematic element in the work of Picasso’s contemporaries and other artists whose careers have spanned the 20th century.

2:15 pm: Session 1

“Le Corbusier’s Fantastic Femmes”
Genevieve Hendricks, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

“From Mosaics to ‘Magic’: Henri Laurens’s Red-Ochre Drawings”
Anna Ferrari, Pembroke College, University of Cambridge

Response by Kenneth Silver, Professor of Modern Art, New York University
Q&A

3:30 pm: Break

3:45 pm: Session 2

“Antonio Saura and the Crucifixion: Facing Picasso in Black-and-White”
Fernando Herrero-Matoses, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

“Prunella Clough’s Cold War Cartographies”
Catherine Spencer, University of York

Response by Anne Umland, Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Curator of Painting and Sculpture, Museum of Modern Art
Q&A

5:00 pm: Break

5:20 pm: Keynote Lecture
“De Kooning: The Kick, The Twist, The Woman, The Rowboat”

Richard Shiff, Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Art, The University of Texas at Austin

In his keynote lecture, Richard Shiff discusses how, among the artists involved with the New York school, Willem de Kooning was unusual in being primarily a painter of the human figure who had no commitment to abstract art. The artist seems to have rendered the figure by imagining another person’s body within his own; in the process, the painter, a man, sometimes identified with a woman’s body. This lecture will explore the techniques that de Kooning developed to suit his specific interests.

6:30 pm: Break

7 pm: “Picasso: A Conversation”
Carmen Giménez, Diana Widmaier Picasso, and Gary Tinterow

The symposium concludes with “Picasso: A Conversation,” in which Carmen Giménez, Stephen and Nan Swid Curator of Twentieth-Century Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and curator of Picasso Black and White, engages in conversation about the Spanish master and his lifelong exploration of a black-and-white palette with art historian Diana Widmaier Picasso, cocurator of Picasso and Marie-Thérèse L’Amour fou (Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2011) and granddaughter of the artist, and Gary Tinterow, Director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, as well as curator and author of notable Picasso exhibitions and publications.

Reception and exhibition viewing follow the talks.

Please note that all times are approximate and details are subject to change.

“‘The World is Round’: The Delaunays, Color Theory, and the Experience of Paris in 1913,” by Tara Ward, April 12, 2011. Photo: Enid Alvarez © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 2011