CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 10/27/2015

Picasso Sculpture

Featured image is one of six bronze casts editioned under the name "Glass of Absinthe," which Pablo Picasso produced at a Paris foundry in 1914. "With 'Glass of Absinthe,' Picasso set himself the seemingly impossible task of representing in sculpture things that are transparent," according to Anne Umland, co-curator and editor of MoMA's current blockbuster, Picasso Sculpture. "These works take as their subject a glass and its liquid contents. The latter is identified as absinthe, a clear liqueur, by the artist's inspired decision to incorporate a real-life metal absinthe spoon into his work of art. The perforations in these found spoons constitute one form of transparency; the diffuse polka-dot patters that Picasso painted on some of the casts supply another; and the cuts he made into his glasses' paradoxically opaque contours, revealing their interior views, represent a third. Here the revolution announced by Picasso's decision to open up the volumes of his 'Guitar' to light and shadow, incorporating a space as a sculptural material, is taken a step further. His 'Glass of Absinthe' sculptures swallow up real objects, transforming them from things of use into elements worthy of contemplation. This operation would remain a constant in Picasso's sculpture practice, the result of his exceptional openness to the sculptural potential of objects in the world."