POSTERITY frequently distorts, both its verdicts and its remembering unreliable. In the case of Dora Maar, currently the subject of a large-scale retrospective at Tate Modern—the first in this country and a joint undertaking with Paris’s Centre Pompidou and the J. Paul Getty Museum in California—she is chiefly remembered as Picasso’s mistress and the ‘weeping woman’ of a number of portraits he created in the late spring and early summer of 1937. ‘Dora, for me, was always a weeping woman,’ Picasso commented on the artist, who died at the age of 89 in 1997, and so she has survived into a new century. Picasso’s schematic, deconstructed, vigorously coloured profile portraits of Maar— stricken expression, tears like spilt seeds or shards of glass— conferred on her a distinctive immortality that is successfully challenged in this exhibition, which seeks to present the entirety of Maar’s long and varied career as an artist.
That career has obvious appeal for the ‘MeToo’ generation eager to redress the balance between the sexes that has typically celebrated male achievement more fully than female. Maar was admired and celebrated—and had enjoyed a degree of commercial success—before she met Picasso. Indeed, the bulk of her most distinctive work predates their relationship.
Denne historien er fra January 22, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra January 22, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds