The surprising power of the early Picasso: exhibit opens in Washington

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- While Picasso wasn't quite to painting what Mozart was to music, neither was he a late bloomer. From his early teens he was an accomplished artist working in an academic style. Shortly thereafter, a development astonishing in its speed and output set in -- with the pictures resulting from the first visit to Paris, in 1900, then those of the Blue and Rose periods, then those bulky figures whose stark features are partly borrowed from ancient Iberian art.

And then came ``Les Demoisellesd'Avignon.'' Picasso's work prior to that great experimental painting of 1907 is sometimes treated as a warm-up for Cubism, something he had to work through to arrive at his peak. But if you polled people on the Picassos they actually like, I'll bet most would name one of the haunting Blue Period portraits or one of the delicate Rose Period acrobats rather than the fractured and less winsome works that followed, revolutionary though they were.

That the work of the young Picasso isn't merely a prelude is the thesis put forth by ``Picasso: The Early Years, 1892-1906,'' currently at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and coming to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts in September, in a somewhat different version. More on that anon. Jointly organized by the National Gallery and the MFA, the exhibition opened in Washington because that suited both institutions' schedules -- and because the National Gallery has more clout than the Boston museum, and in matters of scheduling it can call the shots.

In its Washington incarnation, ``The Early Years'' is a brilliant success -- which is a surprise given that it follows in the wake of a string of recent Picasso shows in American museums. But this largest-ever show of early work is hardly redundant and also makes a staggering point: If the painter, who died in 1973, had instead passed away in 1906, at age 25, he still would have been one of the century's greats.

Part of the show's power is in its blockbuster size. Surrounded by an entire gallery of Blue Period paintings, with a view of another Blue room beyond, you understand what these works are about in a way you can't if you see them one or two at a time. They have a cumulative force.

The exhibition's opening room is a revelation of genius in the making, starting with an endearing little painting, ``The Picador,'' that Picasso made at age 11. At 13 he painted ``The Old Fisherman,'' a skilled portrait found in a Spanish monastery by the show's curators -- Jeffrey Weiss and Mark Rosenthal from the National Gallery and Robert Boardingham from the MFA. You can see Picasso absorbing artists from Sargent to Toulouse-Lautrec to Cezanne in this show, mastering their lessons. And he nods to much earlier artists. An 1899 ``Face in the Style of El Greco'' has that master's signature attenuation: The face looks as if it's being sucked down a drain. A great 1901 portrait, ``Lady in Blue,'' combines the bravura brushwork of Velasquez with the edginess of Symbolism.

After these less well-known works comes the familiar melancholy of the Blue Period, with its subjects of suicide, prostitution, and poverty. A room thus filled has a wet gloom. So pervasive is the blue that the single dash of red in the 1902 ``Woman and Child by the Sea'' is as startling as cayenne in porridge.

Picasso's palette may have warmed in 1905, but his subjects -- clowns, acrobats, migrant musicians -- stayed wistful. The clowns, called saltimbanques, exist in barren landscapes, looking as if they had nowhere to go, nothing to do. Picasso paints them loitering rather than performing.

In 1906, the final year the show covers, Picasso spent the summer in the Pyrenees, where his palette turned to sun-baked terra cottas and his subjects to arid landscapes with windowless houses tumbling down hillsides like so many rocks. On his return to Paris, he began the monumental nudes that close the show, thundering, timeless figures standing in neutral space. What happened shortly after those static figures was the Titanic hitting the iceberg -- the shattering of the figure that came with Cubism.

Museum world politics and policies play a large part in what's in Boston's version of ``The Early Years'' -- and what's not. The Museum of Modern Art in New York has one of the country's finest collections of early Picasso. But MoMA has loaned just one work to the National Gallery and, shockingly, MoMA has refused to lend anything to the Boston venue. (MoMA will be sending some Picassos to an Atlanta exhibition during the Boston run and did not want to deplete its supply any further.) That means early Picasso icons in MoMA's collections, including ``Boy Leading a Horse,'' which is not in the National Gallery show, and ``Two Nudes,'' which is, will both be missing from the Boston presentation.

So will the major Picassos that Chester Dale gave to the National Gallery. None of the Dale pictures can be loaned, according to the terms of the gift. So Boston won't see Dale treasures including the 1905 ``Family of Saltimbanques,'' a grand summation of Picasso's circus pictures and the centerpiece of one National Gallery room.

It's still up in the air whether Boston will see another icon, ``Boy with a Pipe,'' the dreamy Rose Period picture whose presence on a huge banner outside the National Gallery has caused a stir. What's in the pipe is generally assumed to be opium, and the hazy bouquets around the boy's head are pipe dreams rather than wallpaper. Some politically correct types have interpreted the picture as an endorsement of adolescent drug use by a national museum. ``Boy with a Pipe'' is owned by Betsey Cushing Whitney, who has yet to agree to allow the picture to come to Boston.

Boston will show some pieces that the National Gallery won't, including fragile works on paper that can visit only one venue because of their sensitivity to light; a 1901 painting, ``Woman in Stockings,'' which hasn't been exhibited since the year it was made; and two paintings from Harvard that can only be loaned for 90 days at a time. For the most part, though, these aren't key works.

As for Boston's own collections, the MFA has but one Picasso painting from the early years, and it's smaller than a cigar box lid. Picasso is part of the modernist movement that Boston skipped. The generation of collectors that came after those farsighted Bostonians who snapped up Monets while the paint was still wet didn't do the same for the radical movements that followed. While museums staging major Monet shows lust after Boston's paintings, museums working on Picasso shows don't need the MFA.

Which makes it all the more impressive that Robert Boardingham persevered for years with the idea of bringing the show to Boston, even if certain seminal works will be missing, a fact as sad as the tone of the emotion-drenched exhibition now in Washington. In all those Picasso faces staring out of more than 150 works, there's not a single smile.

Speaking of sad. One other difference between Washington and Boston is the price of seeing the show. At the National Gallery, it's free. At the MFA, unless you fall into a student, senior, member, or other special category, you'll pay $15 -- the $10 regular admission plus a $5 special admission charge, which makes ``Picasso'' the most expensive exhibition to visit in MFA history.

``Picasso: The Early Years 1892-1906'' is at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., through July 27, and at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Sept. 10-Jan. 4.

At the National Gallery, free advance passes and same day passes are available in the museum. They can also be obtained at TicketMaster locations for a $2 service charge or through TicketMaster PhoneCharge for a $2.75 service fee plus a handling fee of $1.25 per order.

The MFA will also sell tickets through TicketMaster, for a service charge still to be determined, and at its own box office. Tickets go on sale July 1.