Modernism and postmodernism clash in a jargon-encrusted triptych analyzing Picasso's cubist collages, the charges of...

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THE PICASSO PAPERS

Modernism and postmodernism clash in a jargon-encrusted triptych analyzing Picasso's cubist collages, the charges of pastiche made against his later work, and the repressed effects of his personal life. Krauss (Art History/Columbia Univ.), the author of The Originality of the Avant-Garde (not reviewed) and other studies, here exhibits some of the worst features of postmodern criticism: circular arguments, automatic invocations (e.g., Derrida, Bakhtin, Freud, Frederic Jameson), otiose literary allusions, pompous puns, and simply awful prose. Her opening gambit of taking Gide's The Counterfeiters as her touchstone for modernism's anxiety over authenticity immediately begs relevance to Picasso himself. In explicating and justifying Picasso's supposed inauthenticity, Krauss deconstructs the late cubist collages that incorporated newspapers and wallpaper, such as the Bottle on a Table series and Guitar, Sheet-music and Glass (1912). This dissection of abstract and synthetic cubism, however, precludes Braque's work, which is like discussing only Orville Wright's contribution to early aviation. Instead, it focuses on Picasso's striking, if now familiar, use of newspaper text in cubist cafe still lifes, cast in semiotic terminology of ""signs"" circulating like news clippings. In the second section, Krauss's expertise in her field is ably demonstrated in her commentary on Picasso's next phase, including works like Portrait of Olga in an Armchair (1917) and Sleeping Peasants (1919), when he was first accused of pastiche. She is especially good on Picabia's surrealist jibes at Picasso's experiments in style. Her attempt, however, to link Picasso's neoclassical use of flowing, bare lines with photographic/mechanical reproduction collapses in on itself before she concludes that ""dissembling and mimicry [had] become the medium of his art."" After these airless exegeses, the last section brings in Freud and reaction formation to discuss the perennial topic of Picasso's contentious relationships with his mistresses and his art. After slogging through Krauss's laborious explications, one sympathizes with Braque's remark ""The only thing that matters about a painting is what cannot be explained.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1998

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 272

Publisher: "Farrar, Straus & Giroux"

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1997

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