| This seminar will study the work of the most celebrated artist of the twentieth century; it coincides with the exhibition "Picasso and the Allure of Language," which opens at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in August 2009 and will run through the fall semester. Meetings will frequently be in the gallery. The exhibition presents key works of art representing the whole period of the artist's life as well as all the media in which he worked, providing a unique opportunity for Duke students to study individual works in the original. Picasso has been called the most important artist of the last century, and he was, along with Marcel Duchamp, the most influential on subsequent art practices. From his early work in the anarchist milieus of Barcelona and Paris, through his Blue and Rose periods, to Cubism, Surrealism and after, Picasso's art responded in radical ways to the social and political forces of his times, as well as to the philosophical and aesthetic issues of the rapidly-changing period spanned by his life and work. The exhibition comes from the collections of Yale University, and many works in the show were originally owned by the American writer and art collector, Gertrude Stein; thus, the focus of the exhibition is on Picasso's relations to the various writers to whom he was close, and in some instances with whom he collaborated. The seminar will take a broader approach, while also exploring the premises of the exhibition and its related scholarly events. |
