Picasso & Things

Book excerpt: ''Picasso's still lifes, though less dramatic than his highly charged figurative pictures, include some of his most original, daring and emotionally complex work. This lavish catalogue of a traveling exhibition combines sensitive connoisseurship and ample illustrations (393 plates, 145 in color) to document Picasso's exploration of still lifes in paintings, sculpture, constructions, collages, drawings, prints and ceramics. The great analytical cubist experiments are here, along with many less familiar forays. Boggs, a Picasso scholarsufficient ID?seems circular/it's what this person does all day, every day, so stet.gs , shows how the artist raided the techniques of Cezanne, Rousseau, Braque, Matisse, Zurbaran and Chardin to produce powerful still lifes that bore his distinctive stamp. Bernadac and Leal, curators at the Musee Picasso in Paris, in separate essays investigate his obsession with food imagery and his "Don Juanism," or cheerful, promiscuous mixing of styles.''--