WEEKLY Dose of Art

Pablo Picasso is one of the most famous artist who ever lived. His name is on mugs, tote bags, and phone cases. Everybody knows the name. Most people couldn't tell you why.

But right now, one of his paintings is at the center of a massive argument again. Not about whether it's good. About whether it should still exist in a museum at all.

To understand why, you need to go back to 1907. To a tiny apartment in Paris. And to a painting that shocked everyone who saw it, including Picasso's own friends.

Artist spotlight of the week

The night modern art began

In 1906, Picasso locked himself in his studio in Montmartre, Paris, and spent nine months on one painting. He made a lot of sketches, more preparation than any other work in his entire career.

But Picasso originally named it Le Bordel d'Avignon. The Brothel of Avignon. 

His friends renamed it before showing it publicly because they thought the original title was too scandalous. Picasso hated the new name until the day he died.

What's in the painting?

The painting is enormous. Nearly eight feet tall (~2.4 meters) It shows five nude women standing and staring directly at whoever is looking at it. 

Just before finishing the painting, Picasso visited an ethnographic museum in Paris that displayed African and Oceanic objects. He spent hours there, alone. He later said it was one of the most important days of his life. He went back to his studio and repainted the faces of the two figures on the right from scratch.

He said the African masks felt like magic objects. Not beautiful in a traditional sense. But powerful in a way that Western art had stopped being.

That one museum visit changed the entire direction of modern art.

Why did it cause a scandal then?

One reviewer wrote that the cubists were "exhibiting naked women whose scattered parts are represented in all four corners of the canvas: here an eye, there an ear, over there a hand, a foot on top, a mouth below."

He meant it as an insult. Art historians now consider it a perfect description of what made the painting revolutionary.

Who were the women behind the paintings?

Two of his partners died by suicide. One had a complete breakdown. Picasso responded by painting more.

And then there's Guernica

And here's the thing that makes Picasso impossible to dismiss.

In April 1937, Nazi Germany’s air force bombed the small Spanish town of Guernica, killing hundreds, possibly thousands, of civilians. Shocked by the attack, Picasso painted Guernica, one of the most powerful anti-war artworks ever made.

Guernica is nearly 11.5 feet tall by 25.5 feet long (3.51 meters tall by 7.77 meters long), painted entirely in black, white, and grey. It shows a horse screaming, a mother holding a dead baby, a soldier broken into pieces on the ground, a woman falling from a burning building, and a lamp held out into darkness.

When first shown at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris, many critics disliked it, calling it too abstract. But as it traveled around the world, people connected with its emotion, even without knowing the history behind it.

So what do we do with him?

The art world still doesn’t know.

Picasso changed modern art forever. He also left behind a trail of damaged people and borrowed heavily from cultures he never truly acknowledged.

Maybe that’s why his paintings still feel uncomfortable. Not just because of what’s on the canvas, but because of the man behind it. 

He also hurt a lot of people along the way.

Maybe that’s why the argument around him never really ends.

This Week in Art