Review: Picasso season arrives in LA with two smashing museum shows
LOS ANGELES — It's Picasso season in Los Angeles.
Two terrific new exhibitions, one small and the other large, both unprecedented, answer the question: Is Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) overexposed in American museums?
In a word, no. Hugh Eakins' recent book, "Picasso's War: How Modern Art Came to America," reminds us that the reigning titan of the Paris avant-garde wasn't exactly embraced in the United States before World War II. Since then, he's never been off the institutional radar screen. Yet if the curatorial framing is savvy enough, there is much to gain from looking again.
The exhibitions at Pasadena's Norton Simon Museum and the UCLA Hammer Museum in Westwood are both firsts, which is fairly remarkable for an artist so abundantly studied.
The small show is "Picasso Ingres: Face to Face" at the Simon — just two paintings, roughly the same size, both killer. The pairing was organized by Christopher Riopelle, curator of London's National
