Incomprehensible Genius: A New Exhibition in Norway Showcases Picasso’s Divisive Late Work
When an exhibition of recent Picasso paintings opened in Avignon in 1970, the work was met with bemusement and bafflement. How could the painter of the Blue Period and Cubism be the same artist, now aged 89, behind these childish, almost cartoonish, yet ferociously sexual paintings? Many thought that Picasso had lost his Midas Touch. John Berger thought that the price of Picasso’s fame was an inability to develop. “However interesting they may be,” Berger said of the later work, “they are no more than exercises in painting.” The acerbic English critic Brian Sewell called Picasso’s later work “some of the saddest, most degraded, most humiliating, repetitive, tedious, uninspired, obsessive and crudely painted banalities that have ever masqueraded as art.” Historian and critic Douglas Cooper put it most bluntly, summing up Picasso’s output of the period as “incoherent doodles done by a frenetic dotard in the anteroom of death.” And he was a friend.
The years since Picasso’s death have seen a reappraisal of this period, and just about every other aspect of Picasso’s work and life. Audiences are more conscious of his abusive behaviors and critical of his so-called creative innovations, but the cult of Picasso persists half a century after his death in 1973. An exhibition of his napkin scribbles would attract visitors from all over the world.
Still, PoMo’s decision to focus on Picasso’s final decade, specifically the work produced in Mougins, France, between 1961 and 1972, is a chance to step back and ask broader questions, not just about Picasso himself (if there is anything left to say about him) but about what a late period in an artist’s life means. For Picasso, it meant painting with such abandon that it would put even the most precocious child to shame. (I mean this as a compliment.) Despite the abundance of the work, however, the painful truth is that they were created by a man both acknowledging and refusing to acknowledge his own mortality. A fear of death coats every painting, even the brightest and most joyous.
Located in Norway’s third largest city, PoMo opened in February this year with a group show from its own collection. “The Code of Painting” is the first exhibition from a household name and was curated, at least in part, to attract international visitors to the historic Viking capital. Indeed, an exhibition on Picasso is sure to entice art-lovers from afar, and PoMo will no doubt continue to attract global visitors with an exhibition on Louise Bourgeois opening next year.
Picasso produced a staggering number of works in this late period, roughly 3000. “The Code of Painting” houses just over fifty paintings, but the relatively small number fills up the beautiful converted space (the gallery is in what was historically the city’s post office), and the range of subjects speaks to Picasso’s endless curiosity and fascination. There are multiple paintings of Musketeers, inspired by French literature and historical paintings, but also by contemporary depictions of Musketeers on French television. There are rooms given to deconstructed heads, to paintings of artists and models, self-portraits and nudes. All of them share qualities that define this period of Picasso: bold and primary colors, energetic brushstrokes, garish expressions, sexualized bodies and grotesque faces.
If Van Gogh is the quintessential tortured artist, Picasso is the quintessential chauvinist. We all know about the affairs (and he is certainly not alone in the history of art for having affairs), but his misogyny in real life is hard to ignore when looking at his depiction of women, particularly in the rooms focusing on the painter and model motif and the nudes. The nude paintings in particular deserve critical attention. Many are undeniably fascinating for the same reasons they are disturbing: bodies are contorted, limbs are severed and genitals are rendered crudely, as though they belonged only to paint and not to a person. Picasso supposedly once said that there were “only two kinds of women: goddesses and doormats.” In his devotion and manipulation of the women he painted, his nude subjects appear to be both.
The text on the wall tells audiences that the paintings “raise vital questions about the representation of women and the female body in the history of art.” I hope these paintings prompt such conversations, but one does not put on an exhibition of Picasso to foster dialogue so much as to sell tickets. This is not a blunt criticism: Picasso is still popular, perhaps the most popular artist, and it’s fantastic that a new gallery has made a name for itself with an impressive exhibition. Still, one hopes future exhibitions will be kinder to female artists and subjects. (PoMo has committed to dedicating 60 percent of its collection budget to the acquisition of works by female artists.)
The concept of the exhibition is strong, but there are a few curatorial oddities. For instance, Picasso is said by the curators to have explored gender performativity in this later period. Some have previously argued that Picasso presents gender ambiguously, particularly in paintings like Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (a work produced fifty years prior to this late period), but we all know Picasso was no progressive. The text on the wall concedes that Picasso’s playing with gender “were not deliberate choices in the way gender is discussed today” but even so, the interpretation seems too generous for Picasso, particularly when so many of the works, most notably the nudes and those depicting artists and models, are not only crudely gendered but treat women’s bodies as deconstructed objects of desire from an archetypal male gaze.
Another misstep is presenting the thirteen ceramic plates—each of them beautiful, painted with the same broad brushstrokes as the canvases—under the title of “Emojis: A Universal Language.” A smiling face on a circular plate may look similar to an emoji, but the comparison ends there. These were not communication materials, and their worthy inclusion in the exhibition—they are a joy to look at—is marred by their unhelpful framing. Nevertheless, it’s the work itself that is still the draw, and curators Anna Karina Hofbauer and Dieter Buchhart have done an excellent job bringing together the works that will appeal to art-lovers and the general public alike. That’s not to say everyone will like them, but everyone will have an opinion.
The exhibition ends with a single drawing, unfinished, that is a kind of death mask. In 1972, when he was 91, Picasso, fearing a death he knew was slowly encroaching, produced a series of such self-portraits that more closely resemble skulls than any recognizable human face. The sketch in question—a wide-eyed, ghostly face, titled simply Tête (The Head)—is a presage to Picasso’s own death. It is the sole picture in this room, and the lighting it is illuminated by is dimmed; it is as though the exhibition is slowly closing its eyes, anticipating an unbroken sleep. It’s a beautiful way for the show to bow out, though, like me, many will no doubt return straight away to the first room and look through the exhibition a second time.
Picasso also once said, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” These paintings are childlike in the most generous way: they’re playful, puckish, and the opposite of precise. Why should they be? Picasso mastered precision before he reached puberty. The contemporary reviews were right to be baffled, but their dismissal was short-sighted. Picasso, who more than any other artist is synonymous with reinvention, did not return to childhood so much as discover it fully for the first time at 90. The psychologist Alice Miller, rather than seeing Picasso’s late work as regressive, saw the period as Picasso finally expressing what for years he had repressed. Since he had mastered technique years ago, he was finally “able to let what was stored in his unconscious speak through colors.” Hence, the period produced Picasso’s most primal and carnal work—all of it coated with fear. If he really saw the world as a child in his dotage, it’s no wonder he resisted death through his industrious output for as long as he did.
“Pablo Picasso: The Code of Painting” is on view at PoMo in the Norwegian city of Trondheim until October 26, 2025. The exhibition is touring Scandinavia and will move to the Moderna Museet in Stockholm on November 22, 2025, and the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg on May 7, 2026.
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