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A new exhibit at the Yale University Art Gallery explores Pablo Picasso’s relationship to language and writing. 

Throughout his life, legendary artist Pablo Picasso’s closest friends were writers, not painters.   In fact author Gertrude Stein once said, “Who needs friends who are painters when one can paint like that”?  Writers gave him fresh ideas, says curator Susan Fisher, and seeing Picasso’s work with that in mind illuminates his art. "I think it sensitizes you to his process more so than say, who inspired what image, who was he living with at the time..." 

The exhibit’s paintings, sculptures, ceramics and illustrations show Picasso’s collaborations with writers, and how words and language influence his creative process.  We’re standing in front of a famous painting called First Steps (above). "And it shows a woman with a child, and she’s standing behind the child holding his hands as he sort of struggles to move forward. It looks like he’s learning how to walk"

Next to First Steps is an early study of the work painted on newspaper.  Fisher says you can see how the newsprint works its way into the final painting. "The child’s foot almost looks like folded paper, its been sort of folded upward..or his downturned left collar is like how you’d dog-ear the side of a page."

Running down the center of the exhibition, almost like the spine of a book, are examples of Picasso’s own poetry.  You can also hear Gertrude Stein read her tribute to Picasso. "If I told him would he like it? Would he like it I told him? Would he like it, would Napolean..would Napoleon..would, would he like it?"

 
Picasso and the Allure of Language runs at the Yale University Art Gallery until May 24th. 

 
 Front page photo: "Picasso and Samuel Kootz in Picasso's Studio" by Michael Sima, Smithsonian Institution, Provided by Yale University Art Gallery