The comedian Hannah Gadsby’s antipathy towards Pablo Picasso knows no bounds. In her 2018 stand-up show on Netflix, Nanette, Gadsby ventured into one of the thorniest ethical debates when she talked about Picasso in his mid-50s sleeping with the underage Marie-Thérèse Walter and the idea of “separating the man from the art”.
“Okay, let’s give it a go,” she said. “How about you take Picasso’s name off his little paintings and see how much his doodles are worth at auction? Fucking nothing!”
Gadsby is now turning her hand to, wait for it, co-curating an exhibition on Picasso at the Brooklyn Museum in New York next year (2 June-24 September 2023), with curators Lisa Small and Catherine Morris. The project will “engage some of the compelling questions young, diverse museum audiences increasingly raise about the interconnected issues of misogyny, masculinity, creativity, and ‘genius’, particularly around a complex, mythologised figure like Picasso”, according to a statement from the museum. Watch this space.
