Art Review

Picasso’s Potential: Although New York’s Museum of Modern Art finds new reasons to organize Picasso exhibitions every few seasons, West Coast viewers are not regularly treated to such shows. At PaceWildenstein Gallery, a well-measured survey of paintings and drawings made between 1902 and 1971 by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) is noteworthy just because it has happened.

More important, this impressive selection of 29 canvases and five works on paper is engaging because it is not made up of the museum pieces that are repeatedly trotted out by big institutions or reproduced in numerous catalogs. As a result, Picasso looks less like the masterpiece-factory he is often made out to be, and more like an ordinary artist: a man of great talent and ambition who was as bored by his facility as he was driven by his relentless inventiveness.

Despite the unevenness of the works here, there are half a dozen knockouts. “Standing Nude” (1902), a rare work from Picasso’s popular Blue Period, reveals his youthful fascination with 19th century French Symbolism. The small, brick-like “Head of a Harlequin” (1904-05) delivers a haunting combination of vulnerability and ruthlessness. And the crisp, etched clarity of “Man With a Pipe” (1923) flaunts the fluidity of Picasso’s wrist.

“Still Life With Chandelier” (1937) blazes with barely contained passion. “Head of a Woman (Dora)” (1939) is as disturbingly brilliant a portrait as Picasso painted. And “Seated Woman” (1946), which looks like stained-glass lit from behind, ranks among the most elegantly resolved of his canvases.

Yet, Picasso’s unresolved images--his near-misses, utter failures and seemingly abandoned pictures--are paradoxically what give this exhibition its edgy energy. These works by the 20th century’s most famous, some would say overexposed, artist look surprisingly fresh.

The four paintings of single or paired figures from the 1970s reveal that Picasso’s often-dismissed late works are ripe for reassessment, loaded as they are with comic-book vigor. And four canvases from the 1930s provide such a vibrant splash of hot orange, bubble gum pink, canary yellow, creamy white and sumptuous lavender that, amid an otherwise consistently somber palette, it’s impossible to miss their vivid originality.

What comes clear from this exhibition is Picasso’s profound impatience. Time and again, his works embody a sense that he couldn’t be bothered with the mundane task of finishing them off; it was enough to denote his intentions with a swift scribble or knife-like line. In love with potential, Picasso is an artist of beginnings, not ends.

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* PaceWildenstein Gallery, 9540 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 205-5522, through March 7. Closed Sundays and Mondays.