By KAREN WILKIN
London
Art, even the most original, tends to be about other art—except for the work of "outsider" artists, although some of them turn out to be less innocent than presumed. It's hardly news that adventurous early 20th-century innovators looked to Pablo Picasso for direction and confirmation. (Picasso, of course, looked to Paul Cézanne.) American museum-goers are well aware of the importance of the Spanish master to artists on this side of the Atlantic, thanks to shows such as the Whitney's 2006-07 "Picasso and American Art," which traced his impact on modernists from Max Weber and Stuart Davis to Jackson Pollock and Jasper Johns. More recently, surveys of David Smith and Arshile Gorky have revealed how firmly their distinctive, individual languages were rooted in Picasso's example. And more.
Succession Picasso / DACS 2011/Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
'Still Life With Mandolin' (1924) by Pablo Picasso
But if Picasso's significance to American modernism is well documented, his influence on English-speaking painters and sculptors elsewhere has been a less familiar story—that is, until "Picasso & Modern British Art," at Tate Britain. Surprisingly, the exhibition, which, the wall texts announce, was designed to examine "Picasso's evolving critical reputation" in the U.K., as well as "British artists' responses to his work," is the first to explore "Pablo Picasso's lifelong connections with Britain." ("Britain's connections with Picasso" might be more accurate, since, despite his well-known friendships with British critics such as Douglas Cooper and John Richardson, the artist was in London only in 1919, designing sets and costumes for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.)
