The question we need to ask about the new touring Picasso show (‘Picasso: Challenging the Past’), where Picasso is shown in an old master context (when it was in Paris the audience saw real old masters next to the Picassos; at the National Gallery in London the Picassos are downstairs and the old masters are upstairs) - the question we have to ask is, if it is true that modern art such as Picasso’s is not a sort of punky despairing hollow sad laughter at classicism (as many people used to think), but an attempt to revive and perpetuate great artistic standards and ideals in the face of a sort of guardians-of-culture sector of society’s forgetting of the ideals, and its interest instead in any old visual bullshit and kitsch, then how does that work? (via PUT DOWNS AND SUCK UPS: MATTHEW COLLINGS’ WEEKLY VENTINGS ABOUT THE ART WORLD NO 17: PICASSO
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