To mark the 25th anniversary of the foundation of the Deichtorhallen Hamburg, an extensive exhibition on the theme of »Picasso in Contemporary Art« will be held from April 1 to July 12, 2015. As the opening presentation in the Deichtorhallen’s intensively renovated and modernized Hall for Contemporary Art, the show is dedicated to the overwhelming spectrum of modern and contemporary artists’ perspectives on Picasso. With approximately 200 works on loan – from London’s Tate and Paris’s Centre Pompidou, among others – created by 90 internationally known artists, the show deals with Picasso and his impact on art without showing a single Picasso. Ranging between veneration, intellectual assimilation, and reinterpretation, the works by extremely famous artists, such as Georg Baselitz, Brassaï, Sophie Calle, Marlene Dumas, Jasper Johns, Martin Kippenberger, Roy Lichtenstein, and Robert Longo demonstrate the current relevance of Picasso’s work.
Picasso embodies the art of the 20th century like no other artist. He has been admired, but also hated; he has been celebrated, studied, and copied. Even today, the substance of his painting and his artistic individualism is yet to be exhausted. In the words of Dirk Luckow, the curator of the exhibition: »Picasso’s art is so influential today because his work and his person cannot be divided from one another and this makes his work seem exemplary. It has remained fascinating and relevant in terms of its political and formal aspects. The once-in-a-century genius’s impact on contemporary art still continues to be underestimated.«
All of the major subjects and periods in Picasso’s oeuvre reappear in the exhibition in the from of artist’s reception of them: the Blue Period and the associated themes of loneliness, despair, and poverty, but also more lively motifs from the Rose Period, such as the world of the circus, Harlequin, or tightrope walkers. Beyond this,Les Demoiselles d’Avignon – as the first Cubist painting – and Picasso’s works of the 1920s and 1930s – in which he combines harsh Cubist elements with wide, gentle, and rounded curves – have been stimulating responses among artists for generations. Picasso’s aggressive deformations, which culminated in the reproachful anti-war painting Guernica, have led to a spectacular series of political pictorial compositions stretching from the second half of the 20th century to today. In the exhibition, this aspect alone is represented by six monumental Guernica
interpretations, including Robert Longo’s 1:1 homage to Guernica.
Perceptions of Picasso among leading international female artists, such as Cindy Sherman, Maria Lassnig, Marlen Dumas, and Hanne Darboven, form another focal point of the exhibition. At the same time, themes like »Picasso and German art« or American appropriation art’s handling of Picasso’s oeuvre are dealt with as well. The exhibition »Picasso in Contemporary Art« thus sheds light on shifts in the reception of Picasso’s work among artists. The exhibition begins chronologically with works from the 1930s by Paul Klee, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Erwin Blumenfeld; however, its focus is on the last 50 years of art, beginning with works by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Asger Jorn, and Jasper Johns.
The great sensuality and utterly inexhaustible power of imagination as well as the broad range of Picasso’s work between abstraction and figuration, artistic creativity and political reproach have challenged all of these artists – down to the present day – to engage in particularly captivating dialogues with the phenomenon of Picasso.
ARTISTS
DIA AL-AZZAWI / ART & LANGUAGE / KADER ATTIA / DONALD BAECHLER / GEORG BASELITZ / WALEAD BESHTY / MIKE BIDLO / ERWIN BLUMENFELD / BRASSAÏ / SOPHIE CALLE / HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON / MAURIZIO CATTELAN / PATRICK CAULFIELD / CLEGG & GUTTMANN / GEORGE CONDO / HANNE DARBOVEN / FOLKERT DE JONG / RINEKE DIJKSTRA / ROBERT DOISNEAU / MARLENE DUMAS / DAVID DOUGLAS DUNCAN / HANS-PETER FELDMANN / FRITZ FENZL / GELATIN / AMJAD GHANNAM/KHALED HOURANI / FELIX GMELIN / KARL OTTO GÖTZ / LEON GOLUB / RODNEY GRAHAM / G.R.A.M. / RICHARD HAMILTON / RACHEL HARRISON / RICHARD HAWKINS / ANTON HENNING / DAVID HOCKNEY / THOMAS HOUSEAGO / GARY HUME / JAY Z / JASPER JOHNS / ASGER JORN / BIRGIT JÜRGENSSEN / MARTIN KIPPENBERGER / ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER / PAUL KLEE / GUILLERMO KUITCA / SEAN LANDERS / MARIA LASSNIG / LOUISE LAWLER / ROY LICHTENSTEIN / ROBERT LONGO / DORA MAAR / MARCIN MACIEJOWSKI / GOSHKA MACUGA / MADAME D’ORA / JONATHAN MEESE/ALBERT OEHLEN / GJON MILI / SANDRO MILLER / JONATHAN MONK / YASUMASA MORIMURA / ROBERT MOTHERWELL / OTTO MUEHL/TERESE SCHULMEISTER / ERNST WILHELM NAY / CLAES OLDENBURG / A. R. PENCK / IRVING PENN / SIGMAR POLKE / RICHARD PRINCE / ARNULF RAINER/DIETER ROTH / EUGENIO RECUENCO / CHÉRI SAMBA / PETER SAUL / ANTONIO SAURA / THOMAS SCHEIBITZ / THOMAS SCHÜTTE / CINDY SHERMAN / JOHN STEZAKER / STRAWALDE (JÜRGEN BÖTTCHER) / FRANCESCO VEZZOLI / ANDRÉ VILLERS / WOLFE VON LENKIEWICZ / ANDY WARHOL / JOEL PETER WITKIN / ALEXANDER WOLFF / ZHANG HONGTU / ZHOU TIEHAI / THOMAS ZIPP / HEIMO ZOBERNIG
