Take the bull by the horns_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Take the bull by the horns

As well as slaughters and still lifes, the exhibition is filled with posters, scarves, copies of telegrams from Fidel Castro and commendations from the Russian politburo. Curator Lynda Morris has spent years in the archives, gathering material. There are photographs of Picasso listening intently to speeches at a peace conference in Poland; Picasso with Soviet officials; Picasso staring at a photograph of Stalin.

All this is fascinating stuff, and details Picasso’s commitment and generosity. He handed over suitcases of cash. He protested the death by electric chair of the Rosenbergs, executed for handing over US atomic bomb secrets to the Russians. And he made his only trip to the UK to attend a peace conference in Sheffield in 1950; upon arrival at Victoria station, he was detained by immigration officials for 12 hours.

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Picasso: Peace and Freedom covers its subject fitfully, and is dependent on what loans were available. Later in the show, we come to quieter images: Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’Herbe redone cartoonishly, and very late paintings of musketeers, the artist imagining himself morphing into Frans Hals, and a horny old whiskered Rembrandt. These come as something of an aside. Asked about his political views in 1968, the artist remarked that if he wanted to respond to such questions he would change his profession and become a politician. “But this, of course, is impossible,” he said. Art exists in the social world, and is political whether we want it to be or not. Picasso took the bull by the horns. His art stands up for his own individual creative freedom, but it's one that didn’t give him much peace.