Guitar man: Picasso at MoMA

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Picasso: Guitars 1912–1914

Anne Umland

In 1912 Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) made a construction of a guitar out of paper and cardboard.  In 1914 he made another out of sheet metal.  Between 1912 and 1914 he engaged in what he called 'the process of imagining a guitar', a period of intense inventiveness in his picture making, both in the use of materials and in composition, where the shape of the guitar became just the starting point.

Paradoxically, Picasso narrowed his range of subject matter to the object of the guitar, while broadening his use of materials in a way that no other artist had then attempted.  His techniques include assemblage, collage, construction, mixed-medium painting, combining traditional art supplies – oil paint, charcoal, pastel, ink – with what were then unconventional materials, including cardboard, sand, newspaper cuttings, wallpaper samples and cut-out pieces of sheet music.

Picasso gave both his guitar constructions to New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), giving the sheet metal guitar in 1971 and leaving the cardboard guitar to the museum in his will.  While the sheet metal construction was put on show almost immediately, the cardboard version was tucked away in the Paper Conservation Department and pretty much forgotten about: a comment on how works on paper are often considered inferior to paintings on canvas or indeed, sculpture.   In 2005 an art historian who had been studying photographs that Picasso had had made of his studio in about 1914, enquired about the cardboard version. It was ‘rediscovered’ and the idea for the exhibition was born.

Anne Umland, the curator of the exhibition, uses archival photographs (too often unnecessarily lamenting the unsatisfactory nature of these old black and white photographs), to trace the development of Picasso's working processes from the first construction to the second, discussing his technical innovations along the way. The exhibition itself, at MoMA until 6 June, is beautiful and the book does an excellent job of illustrating the variations on a theme that are the exhibits.

The book includes a detailed catalogue, which includes illustrations of a handful of pictures that are not actually in the exhibition. There is a chronology from 1912 to 1914. The illustrations, both the colour plates and the archival photos of Picasso: Guitars 1912–1914, make this a publication worthwhile if you enjoy looking at Picasso's work and are fascinated by his inventiveness.   The catalogue's essay is, on the whole, very readable, but occasionally stumbles by referring to footnotes which should enhance the text, but on occasion just wind up referring the reader to another text, which can be deeply frustrating.  This practice makes the text ultimately of interest only to an academic reader.  It's a pity.

I know an artist who says that every time he picks up a pencil, he has to acknowledge his debt to Picasso.  Although this book has its physical drawbacks (the point size of the footnotes makes them almost unreadable), and its text is aimed at the more scholarly reader, the sheer exuberance of Picasso's inventiveness comes across. 

This book is published by MoMA, New York 2011. 112 pp. 85 colour/15 mono illus. ISBN 978-0-87070-794-0