Picasso: He’s Pablomatic

“Winter Reverie” by John Beckleman

It’s the 50th anniversary of Pablo Picasso’s death. The museums of the world are giddy. The Spanish rapscallion attracts crowds to this day because post “Me too” people either love him for his genius or hate him for his misogynist behavior. As Mark Antony said, “The evil men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.” So let it be with Pablo. 

Big shows are coming soon to six museums. New York’s Museum of Modern Art focusses on “Picasso in Fontainebleau,” where the artists worked in 1921. Manhattan’s Guggenheim is all in for “Young Picasso in Paris.” The Brooklyn Museum of Art teams with an Aussie stand-up comic for “It’s Pablomatic with Hannah Gadsby.” The Picasso Museum in Paris has British fashion designer Paul Smith serving as curator for their show. Musee de l’Homme in Paris studies “Picasso and Prehistory” which suggests the haters will love labeling him a culture appropriator. Reina Sophia in Madrid, the permanent home of “Guernica,” zeros in on “1906” before the master left Spain for Paris. 

Most museums that own Picassos are showing them off in lesser manners. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago have small shows coming. 

Olson Larsen Galleries (542 Fifth, Valley Junction) opens the New Year with “Hybrid Practices,” an exhibition of Iowa artists with Alyss Vernon and Kathy Edwards Hayslett serving as co-curators. It mixes Olson-Larsen Galleries artists and invited artists “who employ media and techniques that challenge oversimplified notions of what it is to be an artist.”

Fourteen Iowa-based artists here work in multiple media, such as painting and ceramics, or metal and fabric. Others combine techniques in the same work, and still others work in totally different styles all together. 

“Hull” by Molly Spain

John Beckelman shows clay, wood and mixed media on paper to remember Massai necklaces and to celebrate shards from mistakes or accidents. Steven Erickson sticks with oil on canvass to show off his skills at both portraiture and abstraction. The latter paintings have vibrant colors seemingly in resistance to the spread of black bobs. 

Kathy Edwards Hayslett lists at least 11 ingredients in her recipes for playfulness and montage. Laurel Farrin sticks with acrylic on wood or canvass to demonstrate most happy things — “River,” Blue L(agoon?), “Rain-bow” and “Toys & Play.” Sue Hettmansperger shows archival collages and oil on linen. Anita Jung has 12 pieces in the show, all but one from a six-media series called “Travel Diaries.” They are abstractions, but she seems to be a happy traveler. 

Satomi Kawai tops that with 17 works of jewelry and paintings of media as odd as plastic teeth, horsehair, paper clay and tree branches. Mat Kelly shows handmade books and paintings. Nancy L. Purington has a ceramic piece that looks like a third-world water urn. Lee Emma Running exhibits nine pieces, rust on paper and kiln cast powdered glass starring. 

Jim Shrosbree shows 13 pieces as various as mixed media on canvas and paper plus ceramics. Molly Spain has both sculptures and things that hang on walls, tissue paper and tar paper dominating. Trudi Starbeck-Miller uses things like Bavarian china from the 1989 earthquake and vintage sewing needles. Bill Teeple is a realistic painter on both panel and paper. Through Feb. 10. 

New stuff at Steven Vail Fine Arts includes Liza Lou’s “Lightbulb” of hand-colored beads on resin. Lou is the star of the Des Moines Art Center’s (DMAC) headline show. Also the gallery has acquired (yes, we don’t recognize the PC word accessioned) Roy Lichtenstein’s “Sweet Dreams Baby,” and Dennis Oppenheim’s “Objectified Counter Forces” are also new to the gallery. Due to construction projects, SVFA is currently open by appointment. 

Tout: Former DMAC Director Jeff Fleming will have his first gallery show at Moberg Gallery. ♦