For sheer simplicity, there is a lovely little monochromatic oil sketch of the artist's son, from 1922. Only the face and the right shoulder have had colour applied to them, the rest of the seated form being wonderfully suggested through line and cross-hatching.Compare the swift outlines of his pencil portraits: for instance, the great 1920 drawing of Stravinsky, and a similar study of Satie, both with their constantly redrawn contours. The curtain is, however, still fragile, and is displayed at an angle of 15 degrees from the upright, the better to conserve it.One of Picasso's strengths was in his drawing, as can be seen in the half-done 1923 painting Harlequin. A short prologue of early work establishes the historical context. It is a pleasure to see again the biting yet elegant dry-point line of the 1905 Saltimbanques, and other images of that strange cast of extravagantly thespian characters Some of the theatre work has a striking individuality. The 1924 studies for the curtain for Massenet and Satie's ballet, Mercure, reveal both mastery and concentration.
Done in pencil outline with colour blocked in, they have all the spontaneity of a doodle, coupled with a rare breadth of decorative vision. Do we need another Picasso exhibition? Whatever else is going on, somewhere in the world there always seems to be a retrospective of the Spanish master who so radically changed the art of the 20th century. Recently we've seen his sculptures in London, the early work in Washington and Barcelona, the portraits in New York and then Paris. Now there's a grand celebration of the years 1917-24 in Venice at the Palazzo Grassi, with a display of the ceramics planned for London's Royal Academy in the autumn The Picasso industry is booming. Is all the fuss worth it? The show at the Palazzo Grassi starts with the tremendous spectacle of the 1917 drop curtain for Eric Satie's ballet Parade, made for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Not many museums could display this huge canvas as effectively as it is seen here, hanging in the great atrium of the palace, viewable from different heights as you climb through the building.The image of a group of harlequins and strolling players with a winged horse nuzzling its young is naturalistic enough, though flat, in the theatrical convention, with a matt, slightly dusty look (probably the effect of ageing on the glue-tempera paint). For Picasso it marks a return to the depictions of circus folk of more than a decade earlier, in his rose period.
Was this a pause in his inventiveness? A side track? Reprising earlier achievements has a dangerous feel to it: too easy, too comfortable.1917-24 are Picasso's theatre years, and see him travelling more than usual: to Rome, Barcelona, Madrid and even London, with Diaghilev's troupe. This is a different, post-Cubist Picasso, newly married to the ballet dancer Olga Koklova, and attempting a fashionable semi-bourgeois existence. Perhaps his art was to some extent on hold.There are a number of straightforward costume designs on show here, in the making of which, it seems, Picasso had no need to show off, or simply wasn't tempted to experiment much. Were they just a job to be done? Never let it be said that stage design is a superficial art, but there is a suggestion that the entirety of Picasso's considerable powers were not engaged in these projects.Still, there are plenty of good things. Cred must be given to a show that gets George Clooney to take a challenging part as a gay dog, and has Robert Smith from The Cure wanting a part. Animation has always been violent (Tom & Jerry were never put in the dock). The only shadow on the horizon is that a feature-length film looms; let's hope it is better than Beavis & Butthead do America `South Park' starts on Sky One on 28 March..
