The Guggenheim Museum in New York has created an outstanding, comprehensive and engaging online space to complement its latest exhibition, Picasso Black and White.
Featuring 22 of his monochromatic works of art that are on display at the institution, the special online gallery offers viewers a brilliant opportunity to participate in the show away from the physical space itself.
Not only does this afford people outside of the US a thorough window into the exhibition – bypassing geographical boundaries – it also allows visitors a longer engagement with Picasso once they have stepped outside the museum.
With a whole raft of essays, audio commentary, contextual information, and high-resolution images of his work, the conversation is allowed to continue, adding to the magnetic experience of being in the company of greatness.
This is, after all, a very special show. While the pallet might have been reduced to two colours, the power, the resonance and the skill are as sharp as ever. The Spanish artist’s use of black and white was very focused – it was more than just a stylistic thing.
“Claiming that colour weakens, Pablo Picasso purged it from his work in order to highlight the formal structure and autonomy of form inherent in his art,” the Guggenheim explains.
“His repeated minimal palette correlates to his obsessive interest in line and form, drawing, and monochromatic and tonal values, while developing a complex language of pictorial and sculptural signs.”
His use of black and white hues – bridged with shades of grey – was something that endured throughout his career, and materialised even in his early Blue and Rose periods.
It is also there in his exceptionally intriguing experimentations with cubism, his profound neoclassical figurative paintings and in his occasional surrealist creations.
Though Guernica (1937) remains the most visible and influential work of this collection, we see him apply the simplistic colours to other areas of interest beyond war and tragedy.
Whether it is still life or his polite nods of reverence to past masters like Francisco de Goya, monochrome presented itself as the only answer. Sometimes it is more effective to say something without noise. Black and white is a universal language.
Picasso Black and White is at the Guggenheim Museum until January 23rd 2013.
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