Land, Art and the Environment

Last week I was lucky enough to be involved in a panel discussion and exhibition at the Cultural Foundation in Abu Dhabi. Organised by the Abu Dhabi Authority of Culture and Heritage and the Goethe-Institut Gulf Region, the exhibition runs until November 1st.

The panel was chaired by Konstantin Schreiber of Deutsche Welle TV and featured artists who work in some way with environmental issues. The main artist, German photographer Petra Petrick exhibited a series of photographs called ‘German Desert’. The images are desolate, barren and beautiful just like real deserts but actually taken at the abandoned sites of former open cast coalmines in Germany.

Khorfakkan artist Abdullah al Saadi exhibited a wall length panoramic scroll of the Khorfakkan coastline created while in a boat looking back at the coast. His work monitors the change in the landscape as new buildings, especially hotels, arise and aspects of the natural landscape are removed. In some cases this includes parts of mountains.

Muna al Ali arranges potted plants in various stages of growth to comment on the inevitable cycles of life and decay to which we are all subject. The first time I saw this installation called ‘Dialogue with Nature’ was in the Creek Art fair last March. At that time all the plants were very healthy looking but now the dialogue is communicating something much less optimistic.

My work consisted of three ‘Towers of Trash’ which also featured in the Creek Art fair last year, and two ‘Artificial Landscapes’. These are painted on recycled board and depict landscapes but in a totally artificial way using unnatural colours, perspectives and materials.

Mohammed Kazem had several photographs in the exhibition illustrating the rapid urbanisation of the landscape around Dubai and more abstracted work using details of the urban emnvironment.

In the panel discussion itself the artists talked about how their work relates to changes in the environment around them and reflects and interprets these changes. Petra Petrick’s haunting photographs are testament to industrially devastated landscapes and Abdullah al Saadi is chronicling contemporary landscape loss. My work tries to address the fact that there are long-term consequences of having one of the highest amounts of waste per capita and Muna al Ali reminds us of the inevitable!

While the undeniable benefits of development are visible, the negatives, particularly in relation to the environment, tend to be invisible in the short term so are easy to ignore. However, none of this work is meant as an unambiguous criticism of development or Dubai but is more a mechanism to raise questions about issues of land use, environmental sustainability and even public health. Ultimately the environment is the great leveller. We are all equally dependent on it for our survival not only as individuals but also as a species. From a creative point of view it has been the inspiration for some of the world’s greatest art, greatest music and greatest poetry. If it changes we change with it and as Muna’s work suggests, a dialogue with nature is probably easier while it still seems relatively healthy!

Critiquing Art at the DIFC

The first of four panel discussions arranged to coincide with the photographic exhibition ‘To the Holy Lands’ was held last week at DIFC. Entitled 'Critiquing Art: factors in critiquing art within the Modern Middle East' the panel explored some of the cultural dynamics associated with art criticism in this region.

One comment made about the purpose of the forum was to bring like-minded people together to begin a dialogue that underpins the UAEs current art boom and ultimately contributes to its sustainability. This is a noble aim but I don’t get out as much as I probably should so unfortunately didn’t recognise most of the people in the room! It would have been very useful if there had been a participant list available especially one with affiliations so that we all know who the interested parties are.

Another aim was to explore the difficulties of critique in a media environment that tends to cut and paste the press release and where public criticism of any kind is considered negative. There is a rather large gap between this context and the occidental view of criticism as a separate discipline necessary for creative and intellectual development.

One question raised by panellist Stephanie Sykes, Communications Manager of Art Dubai, was ‘Who makes the best art critic?’ Another panellist, artist, critic and curator Talal Mualla seemed to think that artists themselves were in the best position to be critics. In his view, the way in which artists relate to wider cultural, political and historical contexts enables them to situate and interpret the work more accurately.

This may be true but it does not necessarily mean that artists are the best critics. They have a vested interest in promoting their own craft and their understanding and respect for the creative process itself can reduce their critical judgment of the final product. However, this approach probably makes them ideal critics in the environment under discussion!

It’s a shame that this issue wasn’t explored further but it got me thinking about the definition of art critic. To paraphrase from my new favourite book ‘Art Criticism – a User’s Guide’ there are several types of critic:

The Advocate – promotes artists he or she admires and compares others unfavourably
The Theoretician – interprets the context of each work rather than its form or content
The Progressive – welcomes and promotes innovation and new forms
The Ideologue – interprets through a structure of political or social commitment
The Traditionalist – reviews what is new in terms of its relationship to the past

Related to this my book also says there are several types of criticism - thematic, geographical, technical, chronological and theoretical – none of which sound particularly nasty to me. In fact all of the above just seem to be flexible structures or at least starting points for forming an opinion. Despite its name art criticism is not automatically 'critical'.

Given the creative mergers and acquisitions of globalism and technology over recent years it is tempting to think that approaches to criticism must also shift but maintaining some structural consistency amid often chaotic change is probably more useful. That said there is too much happening to be covered by traditional means anyway and changes in the nature of communication enable artists, or anybody else, to say essentially what they like. However, this is most often small groups of people talking amongst themselves so issues of quality control are probably moot. Ultimately, established and traditional authorities of art criticism are likely to prevail until new ones emerge strongly enough from new global settings to challenge them. This relates to the other big unexplored question for me which was ‘Who is it for?

The panel was essentially about Middle Eastern art and while it is always worthwhile to get good information out there in any language, most of it is in English. If the dialogue is about developing and sustaining creativity in the Middle East where are the Arabic commentators? There are loads of Arabic blogs and forums out there so surely some of them must be about art and culture in the region. If anyone knows please tell me. I won’t be able to read them but I know people who can and it would be good just to know they are there!

The other discussion are as follows:

October 15th - 'Digitally Restoring Photographs: practical techniques
October 22nd - 'The History of Photography and Contemporary Photography in the Gulf Region'
October 28th - 'How to run an exhibition: Art Management'

'Let's Talk' Grey Noise at the Jam Jar

For me the most interesting thing at Art Dubai last year was the Pakistan Pavilion. The work seemed very fresh and was generally brain engaging in a way that much other contemporary work there was not. Because of this experience I was looking forward to seeing the collaboration between five young Pakistani artists from the Grey Noise Gallery in Lahore and the Jam Jar in Dubai.

'Let’s Talk’ came about after a meeting between Hetal Pawani of the Jam Jar and Umer Butt of Grey Noise. The exhibition represents a dialogue between the five artists and the work is linked as if it were a conversation. The central pillar of the whole concept is a small catalogue containing actual email dialogue and images the five artists exchanged when the show was in the planning stage. It is essential to read this catalogue, not only to help you understand what you see, but also because it creates a strong sense of personal involvement in the show.

The catalogue provides a basic structure of the conversation being had in the work. After that it is up to you to work out exactly where and how the different layers of the conversation intersect. This is challenging in itself because it is not always obvious. Just like a real conversation there are things that are unsaid, slight tangents and unresolved points. However, when juxtaposing the conversation being had by the work with the emailed exchanges between the artists, the show becomes a complete and cohesive entity. Silences in one and omissions in the other also become comprehensible.

The strongest conversational thread in the work is music or sound. The show starts with Lala Rukh’s sound collage containing elements of nature, politics and traditional music. Following on from this is Ayesha Jatoi’s line of sound words running the length of the opposite wall ending in the word ‘boom’. A full stop is provided by a very simple abstract red and white print entitled ‘Where is my God’? Turning the corner you see six small white graves each containing a different book. The interesting mix of titles spans a time frame of more than 10 years but the most recent is the biography of Benazir Bhutto. The creator of these works, Ayaz Jokhio, is strangely absent from the catalogue discussion.

Next is one of Mehreen Murtaza’s large prints evoking sci-fi, technology, creation and myth, an image that does not seem to relate directly to the conversation but is understood when placed in the context of the email exchanges. Her other print relates more directly to the sound motif but also explores faith and technology as instruments of control.

Around the next corner ‘Echo’ and ‘Sleeper’ by Fahd Burki are not what you expect to see having read the email exchanges and this intensifies the feeling that you have established an intimate relationship with the artists. The connection to the conversation in terms of sound is obvious but there are other more subtle undercurrents that can also be divined from the information you have been given.

It’s difficult to elaborate further because the presence of the catalogue is so central to the experience. It becomes like a puzzle, which you have to solve and the more effort you put into it the more rewarding it is. It is a nice redefinition of interactive - one in which exclusively mental rather than physical processes become the ones interacting with the work. What is perhaps most amazing is that you get all this from only eight pieces of work and a rather diminutive catalogue! So the show may be small but it is perfectly formed.

That said you do leave wanting more. Although you can keep reflecting on the concept and the different ways in which the conversation works, you want it to develop. Perhaps into another room, with another catalogue, different artists and a counter argument! However, this would be a different show and it probably needs to remain small because another thing I found was that it was hard to see the individual pieces in their own right. They became secondary to the larger concept and it was that, and the mental challenges associated with this show, which remained rather than the work itself. Nevertheless, Pakistan is still up there on my ‘to do further’ list!

Sharjah on my mind

After a few weeks of frantic scrabbling around for new gainful employment in Dubai I have come to some conclusions. First is that I may have done it from scratch once but I really don't have the energy to do it all over again. After what happened with my previous job I don't have the motivation either.... and it is this which presents the biggest problem.

I have also found that my previous job was done in such a vacuum it doesn't seem to translate to anything outside of it. So my year of working on a pioneering culture and arts project in Dubai is irrelevant because I cannot use the knowledge gained to get another job. This is very disturbing. If the experience is irrelevant here, what possible use can it be elsewhere? There is a metaphor in here somewhere but I haven't worked out what it is yet.

Another thing is that there is some confusion about what 'freelance' means! The reaction I got from my employers when informed that my job had disappeared was 'but it's ok, you're freelance right?' When you start a project with an end date in spring 2009 you don't expect it to disappear in Autumn 2008! In this scenario 'freelance' just seems to mean an employee who is effortlessly and guiltlessly disposable (tho' the G word is probably redundant in this context!).

Anyway I have thrown in the Dubai towel, given notice on the flat and am relocating to Sharjah. Spouse has already made this move to a new job with rent paid. We figured that we could keep the flat on in Dubai and he could come for weekends but now I am not earning that is impossible so Sharjah here I come. Who knows we may even recoup some of the financial losses incurred by Dubai!

I am sure that things would have been different if we had been a) luckier and b) 10 years younger! The people I have met who seem happiest here are generally under 35, have a car and have no property or other financial commitments elsewhere unlike us. In some ways they remind me of myself in Japan in the mid 80s. Tokyo was a boom town, the money was flowing, my income was highly disposable and it was absolutely fantastic!

Aaahhh.... the good old days...

Art and national Identity

Before I came to the UAE I knew there were at least 10 Emirati artists. I had their names and images in a book published in 1982 by the Arab Bureau of Education for the Gulf States. However, on arrival in Dubai I faced a major problem - there was no National Museum or Art Gallery so no obvious place to find them. It actually took me six months to find a local artist but it is amazing that just over a year later, I am now aware of more than 200 and have actually seen the work of well over 50.

In Dubai until October 6th is an unprecedented government sponsored exhibition featuring over 100 works by 22 local artists. The artists range from veteran painters to a new generation of photographers and graphic designers. There are also literally second-generation artists such as the son and daughter of the UAEs most well known artist Abdul Qader Al Rais.

The conservative tendency in visual arts has been an association with ‘heritage’ as a means of defining identity, generally meaning falcons, dates, horses and camels. A younger and more global generation is obviously rather less enamoured of this limiting image of the nation and ‘nationality’ in art seems rather antithetical to the contemporary international climate anyway. So it was very interesting to see how much would emerge from this show that was distinctly ‘Emirati’.

The venue is the classically styled Bastakiya villa no 69. The first works you see are by Reem Al Ghaith and are familiar from the Dubai Next show at Art Basel. There is a palpable sense of dislocation in her three huge prints of a solitary figure inside a frame or seemingly reflected in a mirror against a backdrop of various Dubai locations. They also make an impression by sheer virtue of their size despite being obscured by several stone pillars. So the initial impact of this show is clearly Emirati.

The only other works in the courtyard itself are nine small sculptures of animals and figures made out of scrap metal by Mohammed Abdullah. With the exception of one in the shape of a mosque, these could have been done anywhere, as could the abstract paintings of Ahmed Sharif and Mohammad Al Qassab in room one. Four collages by Ali al Adnan were definitively regional featuring historical cultural figures from the Gulf including one Emirati. Accompanying these were Karima Al Shomeily's very direct photographs of partially obscured female faces which also had a very local flavour.

In the next two rooms, Khalid Al Banna’s work with its contrasting textures and shades of black, white and grey and Alia Al Shamsi’s photographs of modern mannequins and mechanical fortune-tellers addressed aesthetic universalities. However, Khalid Mezaina’s quirky graphics epitomising a fun and funky side of contemporary Dubai were a great example of modern generational sensibilities. Mohammed Al Habtoor also picked up on this feeling but without making a specific visual connection to the locality. His big cartoon faces suggested Disney on acid to me but provoked much discussion and were very popular with the younger generation. He will be having his first solo show when this one is over.

Similarly, Summaya Al Suwaidi’s photographic images contained nothing distinctly local in content but did seem to be staking a claim for some kind of new local genre of their own. UAE gothic perhaps? The unsettling atmosphere in Lateefa Maktoum’s consumate study of perspective could also fit this category.

Farid al Rais, daughter of the UAE’s most famous artist Abdul Qader al Rais had five works in the show - two large acrylics and three smaller pieces traditional in style if not wholly in content. Her brother Musab al Rais also had five large painted works in a different room. Both are influenced by their father’s work to the extent that all I can see is variations on his earlier themes but I guess this makes them second generation practitioners of a pioneering local style!

Of the other work in the show that connected physically to the locale, Alya al Sanad’s faces covered in sand are sensual and intense while photographs of vague figures taken through a dirty windscreen are like stills from a UAE road movie that hasn’t been made yet. In one of four video works Khalil Abdul Wahid filmed a short journey through his windscreen with visibility so bad at times due to fog or rain, that I’m sure he was risking a serious accident. It was quite a relief when he put the windscreen wipers on. Along his route there were several turnoffs for Sharjah, all of which he avoided - I guess he didn’t want to make a traffic movie.

There are two more rooms and six other artists in this show who I haven't even mentioned here including two who featured in the Meem Gallery Summer Exhibition and two exhibiting for the first time. So there is more to be seen and a lot more to be said. Overall the show demonstrates that local artists are creating very diverse work bearing little relation to the traditionally favoured images of the past, and are interpreting and revealing a very different present. They are essentially producing what will be the creative ‘heritage’ of the UAE in a few decades time. However, it is unlikely that you will be able to chart these developments by walking into a single public institution any time soon. Considering that you will be able to walk into a Louvre and a Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi and a Berlin State Museum in Dubai, this is a national tragedy.

Another tragedy, or perhaps mystery, is that despite the official support for this show there has been very little publicity and no information seems to be available on the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority website or indeed anywhere else. Hopefully, there will at least be a few other reviews before it closes on October 6th .... maybe prompted by Dubai Eye's Siobhan Live which did an hour long segment about this show on September 22nd!

• 'Suhoor, an Emirati Exhibition'
• House 69, Bastakiya District,
• Until October 6th

Roads Were Open / Roads were Closed

The advantage of being unemployed is time. September marks the beginning of the post summer season and all the galleries have new shows so I may get to see them all this year!

I started a few days ago with a trip the Third Line showing its war themed exhibition ‘Roads were Open / Roads were Closed’. This exhibition features five artists interpreting either direct or indirect experience of the Palestinian and Lebanese conflicts. The exhibition’s focus is on exploring how we register trauma and perceive conflict. However, the work is also very much about how artists interpret history and preserve or package national and political, as well as personal memory.

As you enter the gallery, Palestinian Layla Shawwa’s ‘Weapon of Mass Destruction’ is a striking start. The huge slingshot complete with large stone sitting on a stand in the middle of the gallery floor is an immediately recognisable symbol of military asymmetry and moral triumph. The piece and its ironic title acknowledge this standard interpretation but Layla Shawwa’s point is more complex. In the absence of any forward movement, the symbol now stands as an impotent victim of its own mythology. It becomes a memory around which an uneasy internal dialogue revolves rather than being the external symbol of strength that it once was.

Photographer Tarek Al Ghoussein is also Palestinian but born in Kuwait and living in the UAE. As a consequence he is not directly exposed to the conflict but still needs to process and interpret his connection to it. His photographs, all taken in the UAE, depict huge and featureless concrete walls reflecting both the reality of the Palestinian situation and his inaccessibility to that reality. He also photographs barren desert spaces sometimes juxtaposing the two themes. When placing himself in the images he is inevitably dwarfed, either by space or by containment.

Fouad El Khoury documents a month of his life in Lebanon in the summer of 2006 when Beirut came under serious bombardment following the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers. The technique is a series of prints that show his diary page for each day. Sometimes the whole page is situated inside his house surrounded by the normalcy of household items. Other times the text is superimposed on events taking place outside the house, sometimes images familiar from news reports during that period. At the same time as news of what is happening in the nation is reported in his diary, a parallel tragedy is unfolding in his personal life as a relationship fails which makes a nice if obvious juxtaposition of the personal and the political. The whole photo series covers an entire wall of the gallery and makes an impact as both visual and emotional archive.

A very different approach is taken by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige whose multi part project ‘Wonder Beirut’ documents the earlier civil war period using the ‘Story of the Pyromaniac Photographer’. This was Abdallah Farah, a photographer commissioned by the Lebanese tourist board to take postcard images of Beirut in the late 1960s. With the onset of the civil war in 1975, he systematically burned or altered the slides and negatives he used for the postcards to reflect the damage of battle. This results in some fantastic images with parts melted and blackened but retaining postcard colour intensity at the same time. Others such as the ‘Battle of the Hotels’ show sequences of the same postcard image gradually being destroyed.

Another part of the project relates to Abdallah Farah’s many rolls of film, which were never developed, first because of a lack of materials and then out of choice. Each roll is carefully dated, some as recently as 2000, and their contents documented so you are able to read the images but not see them. This part of the project is called ‘Latent Images’. Latency is apparently an engineering term meaning the time delay between the initiation of an action and its results. So the consequences of the action remain unobserved in the present. An exhibition about conflict seems the perfect home for such a notion!

This show runs until October 2nd. Thanks to the Third Line Gallery and artists for the images used here.

Ramadan Kareem

I have spent the entire day so far feeling quite irrationally happy. This is very pleasant indeed and rare for me in Dubai. I can't remember the last time I had a day like this. It's irrational because there is no obvious reason for it... I didn't win any money, get a new job or sell a painting and it's the wrong time of the month for any extreme hormonal tendencies

That said I think it may have actually started yesterday at around 3.00 in the afternoon when I felt the earthquake. Having lived in Japan for a long time I knew what it was immediately. Once I realised that it was just going to be a nice gentle little shake I started grinning from ear to ear and thoroughly enjoyed it. This may seem like a weird reaction to potential death and destruction but what can I do?

At the time of the quake I was writing my first exhibition review since being back. Having written nothing for over two months it was very hard work and I didn't actually finish it until 10.00pm. It's a review of Roads were open/Roads were closed which is at the Third Line Gallery until October 2nd. I will post it here shortly but from tomorrow it will be up on the US arts site Absolute Arts.

I just hope that this feeling continues for a while longer because however irrational it may be it's still happiness!

The Grinch who stole my job…

I now know how I feel about being back and it ain’t good! On Monday morning I discovered that my part time job that became a full time job and then went back to a part time job has now become a no time job. Yes… I am now officially unemployed.

Although I'm happy with the job I did and can console myself with valuable insight gained into the chaotic and brutal nature of local cultural politics, it still sucks! I am now back to square one contemplating the work search all over again except with zero enthusiasm for any further contribution to this voracious and slightly schizophrenic machine!

As if this didn’t make the first day of Ramadan 2008 memorable enough, I discovered Monday evening that my purse had disappeared. The only explanation was that I’d dropped it in a taxi so I called the lost property office of all the cab companies in Dubai to register the loss that evening. The following morning I called them all again but no purse had been found so I then called the bank to cancel my cards. It came as quite a shock when the bank informed me that a cab driver had already called and cancelled them for me! Unfortunately, the bank had taken no record of the cab drivers phone number, name or cab company. So I know that a cab driver found my purse. I know that he was honest and kind enough to cancel my cards even though I find that a little bizarre. So I called the cab companies back and informed them of this development but still none of them had my purse.

So what does this mean? That the companies are lying? That the cab driver cancelled my cards but for some bizarre reason kept my purse? Very frustrating knowing that your purse is out there with no way of getting it back. There wasn’t much money in it - there’s never much money in it - but it is those little personal things that are the real loss.

The only thing that is good right now is that I have been asked to participate in an exhibition at the Courtyard Gallery in November. Beyond that I have no idea but if anyone can point me in the direction of the Bur Dubai dole office I’d appreciate it!

The Dubai Stone and other weighty matters

I just got back to Dubai after spending much more time away than planned ... just like last year! This time it was the unexpected death of my Aunt which caused the delay and mostly because of the customary two week wait for the funeral which I have always found appalling. I am totally with the Muslims on this one... white shroud and in the ground within 48 hours. Still, at least she was in the illustrious company that week of Alexander Solzhenitsyen, Mahmoud Darwish and Isaac Hayes!

The rest of the trip took in Southern England, Wales and Berlin and was a much needed shut off from just about everything.... especially the sun! It rained and rained and the immersion in infinite shades of grey and green not only made me feel normal again, it also improved my eyesight. I do miss the ocularly restful colours of a gloomy climate! Unfortunately my back muscles made it known that they are rather keener on the climate here.

Anyway, on arrival in the UK I weighed myself for the first time in a year to discover the absolute truth of the Dubai stone. I have put on exactly one stone (6.35kg) since last August and so has spouse. Despite being told by everyone at home that I looked better I am not happy because it makes my existing clothes uncomfortably tight and I hate shopping! It means I can no longer avoid a special trip to the mall for real shopping rather than cinema, meeting people or just getting out of the heat for while.

Am not sure how I feel about being back here yet but did think I'd got off at the wrong place when I saw the papers were full of local corruption stories. What is going on??? Dubai Summer surprises certainly wasn't like this last year!

Picasso in Abu Dhabi

At the Emirates Palace hotel in Abu Dhabi until September is the Arab world's first public exhibition of works by Pablo Picasso. Borrowed from the collection at the Musée National Picasso in Paris, the retrospective show features examples of all styles and periods and features 186 paintings, sculptures and works on paper.

I have not really through about Picasso for years. The fact that I can still visualize most of the well known pieces from various periods has resulted in a smug assumption of familiarity that almost meant I didn't bother going to this show. This would have been criminal because this show was an absolute revelation. Seeing such a range of work mostly unfamiliar to me was like seeing a completely different artist and given my own accumulation of years the way in which I perceived the work was also completely different.

The show was hung in chronological order starting with a blue self-portrait from 1901. Most of this early work was figurative including several studies on paper for ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’. There is perhaps a compositional shadow of Van Gogh in the earthy 'Landscape with Two Figures from 1908 and a sculptural influence is already evident especially in a small triptych of three very solid looking heads.

The next section loosely covered the 1920s. The paintings got larger and were mostly of figures in various poses and settings including two unfinished portraits in conventional style, which seemed to have been abandoned half way through. A sense of boredom with these kinds of conventions was reflected in other figures that seemed to become gradually chunkier and more imposing. The most interesting was ‘Seated Woman’ from 1920 which appeared to have started off with at least some classical intentions but by the end the hands and feet were grossly exaggerated and distorted and suddenly the suggestion of a radical change was there. This was also the case with 'Reading the Letter' from 1921. I then went back and looked at the hands and feet of all the other figures finally concluding that an additional motivation for immersion in the joys of human abstraction was because Picasso wasn't very good at painting hands and feet.

The next section covering the 1930s had a huge mix of seated and abstracted female figures, which gradually become more angular as the decade progressed. This use of colour and style in this section were definitely the most familiar like 'Reading' from 1932 although I was amazed at just how much there was. The output in this period seemed to have been more prodigious than at any other time and one big surprise for me was that he seemed to spend the entirety of 1931 doing bronze sculptures of large and distorted heads with hugely exaggerated noses. I had no idea so much of this work existed.

One of the exceptions to all studies of sitting, standing, reclining and general other women was 'Bullfight: Death of a Female Toreador' from 1933. The dramatic and sensual intertwining of bullfighter, horse and bull with a violent end assured for at least one of them was probably the most powerful picture in the show.

Perhaps understandably, there was not much work here from the 1940s. The rate seems to slow down dramatically, the colours turn darker, the motifs spikier and several skulls also make an appearance.

The next surprise was ‘Massacre in Korea’ from 1951, its dramatic impact, enhanced by a compositional layout seemingly borrowed from Manet’s “The execution of Maximillian”. The ubiquitously reproduced image of Guernica has so defined Picasso in relation to war that it was fascinating to see an image referencing a different conflict.

There was not so much work from the 50s and 60s either but what was there suggested a revisitation and amalgamation of the past with some homages – one to Manet and possibly one to Matisse. There was also a one picture with abstracted though explicit female genitalia which I am surprised made it past the censors!
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One of the final pieces was 'The Young Painter' from 1972 and the childlike simplicity of this painting is a marked contrast to the rest of the show. It's directness makes a big emotional impact and it was hard not to wonder if this was Picasso revisiting a very early version of himself. Apparently it was painted only a few months before his death in 1973 so I guess it is a very appropriate image to end with.