As the co-founder of cubism and a prolific painter, sculptor, printmaker, and more, Pablo Picasso was one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century. He was also one of the most influential—his work haunted the imagination of his peers and has frequently been echoed in contemporary art. In Picasso.Mania, Didier Ottinger, Diana Widmaier-Picasso, and Emilie Bouvard bring together a distinguished group of contributors to showcase the rich engagement with Picasso’s work that has inspired artists for decades.
To trace Picasso’s influence, the essays return to the 1960s, when Picasso’s vibrant presence struck a chord in pop art and narrative figuration, and artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein returned to Picassien archetypal figures. Not long after, Martin Kippenberger’s self-portraits revealed the impact of Picasso’s public image on the imagination of twentieth-century artists, while David Hockney’s Polaroid composites and multiscreen videos echoed Picasso’s exploration of a polyfocal space. These essays also explore the ways Picasso’s stylistic eclecticism and the free craftsmanship of his later paintings inspired artists like Georg Baselitz, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Julian Schnabel, while more recently, Rineke Dijkstra’s video installation I See a Woman Crying (Weeping Woman) illustrated Picasso’s presence in contemporary art’s most diverse means of expression—cinema, digital images, and even comic strips.
With three hundred illustrations of works by Picasso and contemporary artists and an interview with Phillipe Sollers by Stéphane Guégan, Picasso Mania is sure to become an authoritative work on the Spanish master’s connection to contemporary art.
