cover image Picasso: The Late Drawings

Picasso: The Late Drawings

Jeffrey Hoffeld. Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Incorporated, $29.95 (79pp) ISBN 978-0-8109-1497-1

Critics have not taken kindly to the octogenarian Picasso's erotic and mythic drawings, which many see as a facile recycling of his earlier styles, an old man's macho posing as he revels in sensuality. In this slender catalogue of a recent exhibit at Hirschl & Adler Galleries in New York, Hoffeldart historian, curator and senior vice-president of the gallerytakes a diametrically opposite tack. Where others see Picasso's spread-eagle images of women, his lusty satyrs ravishing wenches, as degrading or corny, Hoffeld finds evidence for the artist's adoring, devotional attitude toward the female gender. Where others note gynecological obsession, the author perceives ``a sacred quest for re-entry . . . a longing for rebirth.'' This volume reproduces a mere 31 of the sketches Picasso made between 1960 and his death in 1973. Hoffeld's essay calls attention to the aging artist's obsession with death, which lurks quietly in the wings of some of the drawings. (September)