The work was filled with confusion and confusion when the recent exhibition of Picasso’s paintings opened in Avignon in 1970. How did the Blue Age painter and Cubist painter become the same 89-year-old artist after these naive, cartoon-like and fierce sexual paintings? Many people think Picasso has lost Midas Touch. John Berger believes that the price of Picasso’s reputation cannot be developed. Berger said of later works: “How interesting, they are nothing more than exercises of painting.” The acerbic British critic Brian Sewell called Picasso’s later works “some of the most pathetic, insulting, humiliating, repetitive, boring, uninspired, obsessed and rough-painted, these mediocrity have ever been disguised as art.” Historian and critic Douglas Cooper said most bluntly that Picasso’s output summed up as “the incoherent graffiti done by the fanatical dotard madman before death.” He is a friend.
The years since Picasso’s death have reassessed this period, as well as all other aspects of Picasso’s work and life. The audience is more aware of his abuse and criticizes what he calls creative innovation, but Picasso’s worship has been around for half a century after his death in 1973.
Nevertheless, Pomo decided to look at the last decade of Picasso, especially the work produced in Morkins, France between 1961 and 1972, which was an opportunity to step back and ask a broader question, not just Picasso himself (if there is anything else to say), but about what the late stages of the artist’s life meant. For Picasso, it means giving up painting and even shame the earliest child. (I mean it’s a compliment.) Despite the richness of the work, the painful fact is that they were created by someone who acknowledges and refuses to acknowledge their own mortality rate. The fear of death covers every painting, even the smartest and happiest.
Pomo, located in Norway’s third largest city, opened in February this year, with its group’s own collection of collective performances. The “Code of Painting” is the first exhibition known to everyone, and at least to some extent planned to attract international visitors to the historic Viking capital. Indeed, Picasso’s exhibitions are sure to attract art lovers from afar, and there is no doubt that Pomo will continue to attract tourists from all over the world at the opening ceremony of Louise Bourgeois next year.
Picasso produced a large number of works in the late period of this period. The “Painting Code” house has just over 50 paintings, but relatively few paintings fill the beautiful remodeled space (the gallery is the gallery in the city’s post office) and speaks to Picasso’s endless range of curiosity and obsession. Musketeers have a variety of paintings inspired by French literature and historical paintings, and are also described by Musketeers on French TV. There are rooms for deconstructed heads, artists and models, self-portraits and nude paintings. All of these have qualities that define Picasso’s period: bold and primary colors, vibrant brushstrokes, fancy expressions, sexualized bodies and weird faces.
If Van Gogh was a typical torture artist, then Picasso was a typical chauvinist. We all know the affairs (he wasn’t alone in art history), but his real-life aversion is hard to ignore when looking at his portrayal of women, especially in rooms that focus on the subjects and nudes of painters and models. Especially nude paintings are worth paying attention to. What makes many people great is their disturbing reasons, they are fascinating: the corpses are twisted, the limbs are cut off and the genitals are roughly presented as if they belong only to paint and not to a person. It is presumed that Picasso once said “there are only two kinds of women: the goddess and the porch.” His naked subjects seem to have both in his dedication and manipulation of the women he paints.
The text on the wall tells the audience that the paintings “pose important questions to the representation of women and women’s bodies in art history.” I hope these paintings prompt this conversation, but people won’t attend the Picasso exhibition to facilitate conversation to sell tickets. It’s not a blunt criticism: Picasso is still popular, perhaps the most popular artist, and it’s great that a new gallery named itself with an impressive exhibition. Still, people hope that future exhibitions will be more friendly to female artists and subjects. (Pomo has committed 60% of its collection budget to work by female artists.)
The concept of the exhibition is strong, but there are some strange things about planning. For example, the curator said Picasso explored gender performance during this period. Some people have previously thought Picasso showed gender ambiguousness, especially in the case of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (This work was produced fifty years before this late period), but we all know that Picasso was not progressive. The text on the wall acknowledges that Picasso plays with gender “not intentional choices in the way they discuss gender today,” but even so, the explanation of Picasso seems too generous, especially when many of the works (the most notable nudes and depicted artists and models) are not only weird, but also women’s bodies, but rather the craziest object of desire, but rather the craziest object of the object.
Another mistake was the presentation of 13 ceramic plates (each beautiful ceramic plate), drawn with the same wide strokes as the canvas – under the title “Emoji: A Universal Language”. The smiling face on the round plate looks similar to an emoji, but the comparison is over. These are not communication materials, they deserve to include the exhibition (they are a pleasure, and it is a pleasant observation), which is damaged by their helpless framework. However, it is the work itself that remains appealing, and curators Anna Karina Hofbauer and Dieter Buchhart did a great job of bringing these works together will appeal to art lovers and the public. This is not to say that everyone will like them, but everyone will have opinions.
The exhibition ends with an unfinished drawing, a death mask. In 1972, when he was 91 years old, Picasso worried that he knew he was slowly aggressing death, resulting in a series of such self-portraits that resembled a skull than any recognizable face. Sketch in question – A wide-eyed, ghostly face with title tête (Head) – Is Picasso’s own death expectation. This is the only picture in this room, the lighting it illuminates is dimly lit. It seems that the exhibition is slowly closing its eyes, looking forward to uninterrupted sleep. However, it’s a wonderful way to perform, but, like me, many people will undoubtedly immediately return to the first room and browse the exhibition for the second time.
Picasso once said, “I spent four years painting like Raphael, but painting like a child for a lifetime.” These paintings are childish in the most generous way: they are playful, bad, and the opposite of the exact. Why do they become? Picasso mastered the accuracy before reaching puberty. Contemporary comments are confusing, but their firing is shortsighted. Picasso is synonymous with reinvention than any other artist, and he did not return to his childhood, but discovered it completely at the age of 90 for the first time. Instead of seeing Picasso’s later works as degeneration, psychologist Alice Miller sees Picasso as Picasso finally expressing his repressed era for years. Since he mastered the technology a few years ago, he finally “can get what is stored in his unconscious speech.” Thus, the period produced Picasso’s most primitive and carnivorous works-all painted with fear. It wouldn’t be surprising if he really regarded the world as an hour, as long as he worked hard, he could resist death through hard work.
“Pablo Picasso: Painting CodeUntil October 26, 2025, Pomo in the Norwegian city of Trondheim was visited on POMO. The exhibition will tour Scandinavia on November 22, 2025 and will be moved to the Modern Museum in Stockholm, and the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg on May 7, 2026.
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