CORY REYONLDS | DATE 11/20/2016

Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round so Our Thoughts Can Change Direction

The blockbuster international traveling retrospective Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round so Our Thoughts Can Change Direction opens tomorrow at MoMA, and with it comes an exemplary exhibition catalog, illuminating via 15 scholarly essays and 500 magnificent reproductions, what Marcel Duchamp called the "kaleidoscopic series of art experiences" that comprised his life-long friend's career. Picabia's work "ranges widely and wildly, from painting to publishing, representation to abstraction, seduction to repulsion, encompassing as well writing, theater, film, and the organization of elaborate fetes and galas," in the words of MoMA curator Anne Umland. "Picabia's oeuvre testifies to the artist's lifelong success in inventing new selves, only to consign them repeatedly to oblivion." What better artist for the current moment? Featured image is "Très rare tableau sur la terre (Very Rare Picture on the Earth)" (1915). A Staff Pick Holiday Gift Book for 2016.