Picasso Smackdown, Philly vs. MoMA: My "Three Musicians" Is Better than Yours!

Michael Taylor, Philadelphia Museum's curator of modern art, hyping its "Three Musicians" at Friday's press preview for new permanent-collection exhibition

Let's get this out of the way: Its exhibition surcharge notwithstanding, the Philadelphia Museum's Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris, opening to the public on Wednesday, is an interesting show but not a great one. Its 56 works by the featured artist are fleshed out with 158 works by everyone from his indispensable partner-in-Cubism, Georges Braque, to such forgettable also-rans as Joaquín Valverde Lasarte, whose "The Hunters" (below) was, according to Taylor, "seen as shockingly modern [when it was shown at the 1932 Venice Biennale], not retardataire, as it seems today."


Joaquín Valverde Lasarte, "The Hunters," 1931

Since this is mostly a permanent-collection show (with 10 of the 214 works on loan from Philadelphia collectors, including museum trustees Gerry Lenfest and Ray Perelman), it is restricted by the scope of Philly's holdings, which are not in the same league with those of this country's premier Picasso repository, the Museum of Modern Art.

"I wanted it that way," Taylor maintained. "We could have gone to MoMA and the Guggenheim and borrowed all the paintings that you normally see." But he preferred to expose works that are not ordinarily on view and to explore Picasso's cultural milieu---the great, the good and (too often) the so-so.

He conceded at Friday's press preview that this approach left some gaps---most notably the lack of an important neo-classical PIcasso. He had to settle for this drawing:


Picasso, "Three Nudes on the Shore," 1920

But when it comes to Philadelphia's version of the celebrated "Three Musicians"---an elegaic portrait of Picasso (as Harlequin) with his friends, the deceased poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire (Pierrot) and poet Max Jacob (the friar), Taylor brashly claims bragging rights over MoMA.




Left: Picasso, "Three Musicians," 1921, Philadelphia Museum of Art
Right: Picasso, "Three Musicians, 1921, Museum of Modern Art
© Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York