Welcome to One Fine Showwhen the Observer highlights an exhibit that just opened at a museum outside of New York City, a place we know and love is already getting a lot of attention.
Are we finally far enough from the madness that was 2016-2024? Is it safe to say that Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was a great artist? I can’t even say that I’ve never seen a bad show of his, but the oeuvre is so dense and varied that even shows with an outré thesis tend to offer amazing examples. That last year in Gagosian gave many bangers, despite having many ideas, intended to remind us of his strong politics and his immigrant life. Yes, after seeing what we have done in the entertainment industry, in 2025 we can even suggest that he is an artist Guernica (1937) has a high moral standard compared to the comedies on Netflix.
The Cleveland Museum of Art’s “Picasso and Paper” focus is not small, meaning almost every wall boasts the treasure. The exhibition, organized in collaboration with the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in collaboration with the Musée National Picasso-Paris, includes nearly 300 works from Picasso’s entire eighteen-year career.
What stands out about this sample size is the artist’s respect for the medium. He listened to it, and it gave him an array of opportunities. This can be seen in every exhibition but even in just one work, Women in Their Private Houseswhich was created in the same year as Guernica it also shares its dimensions but is made from cut-out wallpaper with gouache on paper pasted onto canvas. Picasso was far from Cubism and even Demoiselles D’Avignon (1907), but this jangly-text piece feels like a personal look at how he pieced together those parts of his life. With its everyday elements and Peeping Tom theme, it also feels like a rich and quotidian love story. It should be noted that this is the time when the women in his life include his wife Olga Khokhlova, his wife Marie-Thérèse Walter and Dora Maar. Considering that many people probably feel like they are making a collage!
That work is from the Musée National Picasso, but a surprising number of the other pieces in the exhibition come from his impressive collection at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Some of my favorites in this show are his Rose Period paintings and watercolors of women, especially his subjects. The Harem (1906), also in the collection. Like this A private housethese women are real but still goddesses, their superiority highlighted in the finished product by the buff but lazy-looking john at the front. He is by no means the eunuch of the ladies’ quarters, but he may be as he stares at them leaning against the wall—an entirely different and younger kind.
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These works are about how scary it is to look at something loved in such a beautiful way, which I think most rational people understand. The paper is where Picasso liked to talk about common themes, such as the one where he is a monster about to kidnap a lady. The paper allows one to work shaggy.
I was amazed by his lithograph versions Les Femmes d’Alger (1955)—Picasso would make a print, fuse the plate and then make another print and distort the plate. Recent prints are not visible. Very few artists do such experimental work today, and not for reasons of political correctness. Moreover, art has become more valuable on all levels.
“Picasso and paper” is on view at the Cleveland Museum of Art through March 23.
