Each time I come to the work of an artist with whom I've engaged before, it feels like both the continuation of a conversation and a new encounter. As I've reflected before, it's like a friendship, or a relationship of any kind - it continues even in the spaces between one's actual meetings or interactions.
Picasso is one who I've never quite taken to heart; over time, I've come to admire his work, but it's never really struck me. This sizeable collection hasn't changed that, but this time round it felt like I was experiencing his style differently, and more receptively, than in the past. I'm not sure what it was - perhaps a change in my sensibility wrought by a greater empathy for the distortions of his depictions? Anyway, I felt the power of a few of the pieces in particular ("La coiffure", 1954; "Jacqueline in the studio", 1956 and "Woman in the studio" from the same year), not to mention a remarkably erotic "Reclining woman" watercolour drawing from 1969. (The collection has a bit of a lean towards the later work from the 1950s and 1960s.)
There was also a scattering of pieces by other artists starting with some Impressionist pieces (including a lovely Pissarro, "Around Louveciennes, the road", 1871 and likewise a Monet, "Vernon Church, fog", 1894) and a bit of a miscellany from then to the mid 20th century, including some nice Chagalls, a trio of delightful Miros (I especially liked "Dancer II", 1925) and an engaging Kandinsky ("Multiple Forms", 1936).
And, in a series of rooms on the basement level, a collection of 125 works by Paul Klee (who I hadn't realised before was Swiss-German), hung chronologically with no title cards or explanatory notes, creating a sense of immersion that was accentuated by the small dimensions of the individual pieces - and of course always invited by Klee's mysterious yet always legible artistic language. As usual with him, my favourites tended to be those where colour was most in play, but there was a lot to take in and by the end I felt quite overloaded in a way that was far from unpleasant.
"Queen of Hearts", 1922
