Synopsis
This book focuses on the lesser known (and admired) 'political Picasso' of the period after 1944. In the decades after joining the French Communist Party in late 1944 at the end of World War Two, Picasso produced a body of work connected directly, if in complex and varied ways, to his left-wing political beliefs and continued affiliation to a Republican Spain destroyed by General Franco's fascist victory in the Spanish Civil War. The book draws together dynamic scholars from Europe and the USA examining facets of this era and Picasso's place within it in a variety of innovative ways developing art historical, critical and social-theoretical themes. Contributors reconsider, for example, the significance and legacy of Picasso's 1937 Guernica as a talisman of quality and vanguardism for later works by the artist concerned with, for example, the US invasion of Korea in 1950 (Harris, Craven, Lopez), the Cold War atomic and ideological standoff between the West and the USSR (Morris, Wilson), the continuation of struggle against Franco's regime in Spain (Barreiro-Lopez) and connections between the avowedly political and propagandistic works and Picasso's earlier cubist, collage and surrealist periods (Cubitt, Fijalkowski). All authors pose related questions concerned with the significance of Picasso's political works today, and ask how images and personas of the artist have developed and been appropriated by many others with their own distinct political agendas. How might art today be 'political,' or not be capable of being political, in ways and with objectives that Picasso and those in his time in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s would have recognised?
About the Author
Paula Barreiro Lopez is an art historian working at the Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales (CSIC) in Madrid. Her research focuses on cultural policy, cultural transfer, artistic practices and art criticism during the Franco regime and intellectual networks in Europe during the Cold War. She has published several books as well as articles and given lectures in Spain, France, the UK and the USA. Her last book, La abstraccion geometrica en Espana 1957-1969 (Madrid, CSIC, 2009), is the first study on the various geometrical tendencies during the 1960 s in Spain within the European context. Krzysztof Fijalkowski is Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, Norwich University College of the Arts. As a writer and researcher, his principal field is the study of international surrealism; recent themes explored have included the relationships between surrealism and design, architecture and photography, and the specificity ofsurrealist practice in Central and Eastern Europe. Contributions to journals, books and exhibition catalogues have included publications for the V&A, Barbican Art Gallery and Tate. He is also active as a curator, translator and artist. Josie Lopez is a PhD candidate and Jacob K. Javits Fellow at the the University of California, Berkeley. Her current research focuses on 19th - Century Mexican political prints by lithographer Constantino Escalante and his interactions with Goya and Daumier. She completed a Master's Thesis on Goya's satirical print series "Los Caprichos" under the direction of the late David L. Craven and would like to dedicate Picasso and the Forgotten War to him. Professor Lynda Morris is Chair of Curation and Art History at Norwich University College of the Arts. She founded the bookshop at the ICA in 1969 and organised the 'Book as Artwork 1960-1972' exhibition with Germano Celant. She curated the first UK exhibitions of Bernd & Hilla Becher, Agnes Martin (SNGMA) and Gerhard Richter. She founded 'EASTinternational', Norwich 1991 to 2009. She wrote regularly for Studio International, The Listener, Art Press and Art Monthly. In 1990 she organised the British Art and Immigration issue for Third Text (no 15). Forty-five years of her work was celebrated in 'Dear Lynda...' at White Columns, New York City, in 2012. In 1982 she organised 'The Artists International Association 1933 to 1953' exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford. The AIA organisers worked with Picasso and the post-war Peace Movement. Thirty years later she co curated 'Picasso: Peace and Freedom' at Tate Liverpool, the Albertina museum, Vienna and the Louisianna museum, Denmark. She has recently lectured on Picasso in Ramallah, Wroclaw and Gernika (Guernica). Sean Cubitt is Professor of Film and Television at Goldsmiths, University of London; Professorial Fellow of the University of Melbourne and Honorary Professor of the University of Dundee. His publications include Timeshift: On Video Culture, Videography: Video Media as Art and Culture, Digital Aesthetics, Simulation and Social Theory, The Cinema Effect and EcoMedia. He is the series editor for Leonardo Books at MIT Press. His current research concerns the history and philosophy of visual technologies, media art history and ecocriticism and mediation. Sarah Wilson is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art and holds a 'chaire d'excellence' at the Centre for the Cultural History of Contemporaray Societies, (CHCSC), Universtiy of Versailles-Saint Quentin. She has been interested in the political Picasso since working on 'Paris-Paris, Creations en France, 1937-1957 at the Centre Georges Pompidou in 1981, and has published throughout her career in French as well as English. She was principal curator of Paris, Capital of the Arts, 1900- 1968 at the Royal Academy of Arts, London and Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (2001-2) and curator of Pierre Klossowski and
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