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Ambrose Li

A painting by a mainland Chinese contemporary artist created by exploding gunpowder may seem an unlikely item for a Picasso exhibition, but it is among more than 190 artworks at Hong Kong’s M+ museum.
Gunpowder Drawing No 8-A5 by Cai Guo-qiang is displayed alongside the Spanish master’s cubist study of the Sacre-Coeur Basilica in Paris.
Titled “Picasso for Asia: A Conversation”, the exhibition opened on Saturday is co-organised by M+ in the West Kowloon Cultural District and the Musee National Picasso-Paris.
With more than 60 pieces from the Paris museum, including some not shown outside France before, it marks the first major showcase of Picasso’s works in Hong Kong in more than a decade.
Born in Spain in 1881, Picasso spent most of his life in France and, by the time he died in 1973, was considered an enormous influence on 20th century art.
His works covered multiple art movements, including cubism, classicism and surrealism, from paintings and sculptures to etchings, lithographs, ceramics and more.

Three years in the making, the exhibition at M+ shows his works alongside about 130 pieces by 30 Asian and Asian-diasporic artists from the museum’s collection and loans.
“He is an artist from the 20th century, and we need to [bring him to] the 21st century,” said Cecile Debray, president of the Musee National Picasso-Paris, which has the largest collection of Picasso art.
She said the exhibition imagined Picasso’s legacy in Asian art, highlighted historical and iconographic links, and presented “what is relevant to the contemporary world and young artists”.
Some highlights of the show include Picasso’s Portrait of a Man from his “blue period”, Massacre in Korea and Horse Head, which was a sketch that paved the way for his monumental work Guernica.
Explaining the decision to exhibit Picasso’s works alongside pieces by others, Francois Dareau, the exhibition’s co-curator from the Paris museum, said: “We wanted to try a new approach to bring artworks into people’s own collection to make it more relevant.”
Using Picasso’s cubist work and Cai’s gunpowder painting, which is part of the M+ collection, as an example, he said: “Cubism was about blowing up reality and then putting it back on the canvas, but for Cai … it was just to blow it up literally.”

The signature style of the artist, born in Fujian province in 1957, is to ignite gunpowder on a canvas to record the chemical reaction.
The exhibition notes explain that by “combining destruction and creation, Cai’s radical artistic invention echoes Picasso’s experimentation with cubism and proposes new ways of painting”.
Elsewhere in the exhibition, Picasso’s works are paired with those by artists such as Cuban painter Wilfredo Lam, American sculptor Isamu Noguchi and Hong Kong artist Luis Chan.
Co-curator Doryun Chong from M+ acknowledged that the connections between Picasso’s works and those of the other artists might not all be apparent.
But he added: “A little bit of confusion, a little bit of curiosity, is where I think [viewers] can begin to understand different moods of conversation that are possible between artists. In many ways, they are riddles throughout the exhibition for people to solve.”

The show also highlights Picasso’s presence in China in the mid-20th century, as his famous dove etching for the Paris Peace Conference in 1949 was used on Chinese stamps, which are included in the exhibition.
Picasso was a member of the French Communist Party from 1944 until his death, but not all his works were allowed in China. His cubist art, for example, was considered too bourgeois in the 1950s and 1960s.
Chong said Picasso joined the party not for its ideology, but because he felt the French resistance against the Nazi occupation in World War II was led mostly by the communists.
He said the exhibition, which for the first time showed masterpieces from the Paris museum alongside works from a museum in Asia, also contributed to Hong Kong’s role as an East-meets-West centre for international cultural exchange, as Beijing had hoped.
“We are taking the Western master and putting him in dialogue with whole generations of artists of different nationalities, backgrounds and styles,” he said.
The “Hong Kong Jockey Club Series: Picasso for Asia – A Conversation” exhibition runs from this Saturday to July 13 at the M+ West Gallery.
Tickets are priced at HK$240 (US$31) for adults and HK$120 for the elderly, children aged seven to 11, and people with disabilities.


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How Picasso exhibition at Hong Kong’s M+ brings Spanish artist into 21st century

“Horse Head. Sketch for Guernica” by Pablo Picasso. Organisers have said they hope the exhibition can bring the artist’s work into the 21st century. Photo: Nora Tam

“Gunpowder Drawing No. 8-A5” by Cai Guo-qiang. The artist’s signature style is to ignite gunpowder on a canvas to record the chemical reaction. Photo: Nora Tam

“Strange Bird” by Isamu Noguchi is among the pieces on display for the Picasso exhibition. Photo: Nora Tam

The show also highlights Picasso’s famous dove etching for the Paris Peace Conference in 1949, which was later used on Chinese stamps. Photo: Nora Tam

Hong Kong’s M+ museum to show Pablo Picasso’s works through Asian lens

The Old Man by Pablo Picasso is shown during the media preview of the M+ exhibition. Photo: Nora Tam

Bust of a Woman by Pablo Picasso is shown during the media preview of the exhibition. Photo: Nora Tam

Hong Kong’s M+ museum to show over 200 works by Zao Wou-Ki from December

Zao Wou-Ki with two of his Chinese paintings from 1994, photographed in Hong Kong in September 2003. Photo: K. Y. Cheng

Zao’s oil masterpiece, Piazza Siena, from 1951. Photo: M+

An untitled aquatint with etching by the artist from 1974. Photo: M+

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More than 60 works from Picasso museum in Paris will be shown together with 130 by artists of Asian origin


More than 60 works from Picasso museum in Paris will be shown together with 130 by artists of Asian origin.
