exhibition review

Museum of Modern Art Exhibits Rare Early Works of Picasso from Modern Art Collection

‘Picasso: Guitars (1912-14)’- On view at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, through June 6, 2011

Though living in France most of his life, Picasso was a Spaniard, through-and-through, remaining proud of his birthright, cultural heritage and sun-drenched memories of childhood, over his lifetime. Any retrospective of his work as a painter and sculptor reveals that he was continually informed by the iconic images of Spain, at both conscious and unconscious levels: the raven-haired, large-eyed female figures, matadors and bull-fighting motifs, the open-balcony studio settings of his imagination, replete with palm-strewn vistas of warm seas, mythic creatures from Greco-Roman legend and seductive naked sylphs, all belie his enduring visceral attachment to las cosas de españa. (left: Pablo Picasso, Guitar (1912). The first Cubist collage. Coll. MOMA, NYC)fine arts magazineMore

Metropolitan Museum of Art with Rarely-Seen Chinese Treasures Exhibition

Qianlong Garden Complex Palace Museum Beijing artes fine arts magazine — Qianlong Garden Complex, photo: Dennis Helmar, courtesy of the Palace Museum, Beijing.

In 1644, just 24 years after the English Pilgrims arrived on what is today the Massachusetts coast of the United States, the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) was overthrown by the Manchu, a people from the north who were not Han Chinese. The subsequent establishment of the Qing (pronounced “ching”) Dynasty (1644-1911) signaled the end of Han rule and the installation of foreign rulers in the imperial palace complex, also known as the ‘Forbidden City,’ in Beijing.

Despite their non-Han origins, however, the Qing produced two of the greatest imperial patrons of art in China’s long history: the Kangxi (pronounced “kang-shee”) and the Qianlong (pronounced “chee’en-long”) emperors, the grandfather and grandson who ruled from 1662 to 1722 and from 1736 to 1799, respectively. fine arts magazineMore