Picasso Linoleum Cuts: The Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kramer Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful and informative
Review: Pablo Ruiz y Picasso worked in a remarkable number of media. His drypoint prints look like they were made by a man enraged, or more likely Spanish. These are some of his linocuts, obviously made by the same hand.

First, please, don't dismiss block prints as kids' stuff. It's wonderful that the medium presents such a low technical barrier that it's accessible to many makers. That doesn't matter. A great artist can make better art with a charred stick than you or I can with a full studio. And he did.

Some are white-line prints ("Painter and his Model"), some are black-line (page 133), and some ("Dancers and a Musician") are both. Many use multiple blocks ("Small Bacchanalia"), others ("Bulls in Vallauris") are single blocks or ("Family Scene") reduction prints a.k.a 'suicide' prints. Some are delicate ("Head of a Boy"), but most are bold.

This is an amazing collection, with ten unique pages at the end. Clay impressions were taken from some of those blocks. They captured the individual tools marks in the original linocut, and showed just how his hand pulled each line from the lino surface. If you've ever made a block print, you will feel in your hand how Picasso created the image - an experience beyond words.

I'm not the one to fault the master, but I have to ask: what was his artistic reason for not sharpening his tools? Again and again (images #110, 118, 82, and others), the linocuts show a jagged line where his gouge tore the surface. I know that linoleum blocks are fragile and break with use (#82 again), but the ragged edge was not necessary. Or was it?

Anyway, it's a wonderful book. The color is good, the prints are incredible, technical information is adequate, and the commentary sinks out of sight. This book mostly just leaves you by yourself, with the beautiful prints.

//wiredweird