Review | Picasso exhibition in Hong Kong is politely critical of artist’s misogyny. Is it enough?

Picasso was a genius with a dark side, one the M+ museum’s show of his art with modern and contemporary Asian art only partly addresses

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Chinese artist Zeng Fanzhi’s 2011 portrait of Pablo Picasso and Robert Doisneau’s 1952 photograph of the Spanish-French artist at the entrance to an exhibition of work by him alongside modern and contemporary Asian art at Hong Kong’s M+ museum. Photo: Lok Cheng

Published: 5:15pm, 17 Mar 2025

Pablo Picasso is one of the subjects of bestselling author Claire Dederer’s 2023 book Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma. She asks a question many people have struggled with: should we allow ourselves to gaze in wonder at the evidence of his artistic genius, or does it make us complicit in whitewashing his misogyny and abusive relationships with women?

Funnily enough, “abusive sexual predator” is not among the four “archetypes” the Spanish-French artist is said to represent according to the titles of the sections in a new exhibition at M+, Hong Kong’s museum of visual culture: “The Genius”, “The Outsider”, “The Magician” and “The Apprentice”.

The exhibition, “Picasso for Asia: A Conversation”, shows a deference towards him that reinforces the idea that he was the quintessential 20th century artist. This tone detracts from the museum’s intent to create a critical dialogue between Asian contemporary art and Picasso, a culturally remote and at times problematic figure from Western art history.

Around 60 exquisite works by Picasso have been loaned to M+ by the Musée national Picasso-Paris (MnPP). That in itself is probably sufficient to attract a sizeable audience, although on their own they would not have made this a particularly interesting exhibition.

Figures by the Sea (1931) by Pablo Picasso, on display in Hong Kong. Photo: courtesy of Musée national Picasso-Paris

Many of the same pieces were included in a Picasso exhibition at the Hong Kong Heritage Museum in 2012, and there have been larger overviews of the artist’s work staged in East Asia more recently, such as the 2019 and 2021 MnPP touring exhibitions at UCCA in Beijing, China, and the Hangaram Art Museum, in Seoul, South Korea. In addition, more than 50 Picasso exhibitions were held in 2023, the 50th anniversary of his death.