Art Reviews

Pablo Picasso: The Legacy of Youth and Slee’s Swans

Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts

24/03/22

On the first morning that has felt like spring this year I found myself just inside the entrance of the Sainsbury Centre at UEA. Bathed in the light, Slee’s Swans were organised in arrow formation as though ready to migrate. Despite their minimalist design the Swans have a beautiful energy about them, with the ridges of their bodies mimicking ripples in water. Despite their perfection, the swan’s ceramic bodies are handmade. The artist himself says that though he has created more swans in the past these to him seemed a gaggle, and comments on the way swans seem to unerringly appear in the decorative arts. Slee’s work often takes the form of glossy, colourful sculpture, and has said in the past that his inspirations come from past objects, found items and souvenirs, perhaps explaining the constant appearance of swans in his art.

Next, we headed down the stairs to the Centres exhibition area. The Legacy of youth follows through the relatively early stages of Picasso’s career (his work in his childhood to the start of his cubism era). If you are visiting, I would make a point to follow the art through that way, as it is fairly easy to start at the end by accident. The work exhibited includes sketches and paintings and is accompanied by pieces from those who worked alongside him in the different schools of art he traversed. The accompanying text is informative and interesting, I really enjoyed learning about the Intimism movement, which came along as a pairing to Impressionism, involving small (intimate) snapshots of life. The loveliest part is the number of sketches and quick drawings the exhibit has, which give a more human view of Picasso’s art. The exhibit culminates in a critical look at Picasso’s use of different cultures in his pieces, in particular masks of African cultures. Picasso found his fascination for these masks during the World Fair in Paris, and they appear in many of his later works.

The full stop to the exhibition is a new work by British Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare, which takes the form of an African mask, decorated in the style of batik, a technique of fabric dying synonymous of western Africa. Shonibare references this due to its multicultural history, and the fact that in reality batik fabrics are mostly mass produced in Holland. The artist knowingly created the piece as a response to Picasso’s work with African culture, saying “Picasso was interested in appropriating from another culture, and I also appropriate from European ethnic art”. To end on this piece creates an atmosphere of discussion and curiosity that genuinely permeated into the rest of my day (in a good way!)

In the words of exhibition curator Professor Paul Greenhalgh, “ [Picasso’s] duality explains the complexity of his genius”, and by pairing his work with that which casts a more discerning view, we as an audience are able to question an artist who at the end of the day was not infallible. The Sainsbury’s Centre is well worth a visit this Spring.
Slee’s Swans is open 13th March – 14th August, free entry
Pablo Picasso: The Legacy of Youth is open 13th March – 17th July, £13 concessions