Pablo, The Works

The French cultural attaché and co-organiser of Metamorphoses: 1900-72,Laurent de Gaulle, says the initial low turnout has been because of the absence offar-reaching and timely publicity. "Many people have told me the reason they are notgoing now is because they fear there will be too much of a crowd," he says. But noteveryone has access to Laurent! "Kuchh maja nahin aa raha hai," says aCentral Industrial Security Force jawan from Bihar, who suddenly finds himself guarding"strange and ugly" paintings that don’t make sense. Except one that hascome to be his favourite. It’s called Man with a Mandolin and the jawanenthusiastically conveys to me the joy and wonder of deciphering a man playing music amida jangled web of cubes. In another hall two artists animatedly discuss some artisticdiscrepancy in the Minotaur series, which incidentally is the most figurative ofthe lot. Beyond that there is only the sound of soles squeaking on the buffed-up floor.

The playful genius of the past century would surely have gone into a blue funk had heseen the forbidding security checks, the lackadaisical staffers and incomprehensibleblurbs that describe his life and works. All arrangements are made to keep the hoi polloiout, physically and metaphorically.

The exhibition is well-mounted and the halls spacious enough to give viewers the timeand distance to study the works, which contain Picasso’s essence, his trademark chaosand his ardent desire to simplify art down to its bare skeleton. These 122 works are aboutissues and mind-hungry demons that haunted the painter-sculptor throughout his long andprolific life. Here they are exorcised.