An in-house blockbuster

THE portrait of Gertrude Stein (shown right) was the first Picasso to enter the collection of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. It arrived in 1947. By then the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) had 82 of his works. The tortoise never overtook the hare. Nevertheless, with 500 works, the Met today has the second most important collection of Picassos in the United States. Now, 300 of them have been brought together for an exhibition (from April 27th to August 1st) that is absorbing and quirky—and has quite a tale to tell.

纽约大都会艺术博物馆（Met）收藏中的第一件毕加索作品就是这幅葛楚德·斯坦的肖像。它于1947年来到这里。当时纽约现代艺术博物馆（MoMA）已经拥有82件毕加索作品。乌龟的确从未超越兔子，但如今大都会博物馆也以500件毕加索作品坐拥美国第二大毕加索作品收藏。现在，其中的300件将于4月27日到8月1日间进行展出。这将是一场引人入胜而又离奇古怪的展览——其中的故事也很值得娓娓道来。

On view are all of the Met’s Picasso paintings, drawings, sculptures and ceramics and half of its 400 prints. From the painter’s rose period there is “The Actor”, newly restored. “Head of a Woman”, Picasso’s first large cubist sculpture, occupies the centre of a room devoted to that period. “Woman Reading” is a love song to a mistress and muse, Marie-Thérèse Walter. In sharp contrast, “Man with a Lollipop” is an unsettling introduction to the artist’s cruel streak. One large room is hung with jaunty linoleum prints. There are also visual puns. “Tie”, cut out of paper, has four eyes drawn in crayon descending from its faux knot to its point. It was a gift to Alfred Barr, MoMA’s first director, who was famed for his good eye.

展品包括大都会博物馆所有的毕加索油画、素描、雕塑、陶器制品，以及400件版画作品的一半。毕加索"玫瑰时期"的画作《演员》是新近才修复好的。毕加索的第一件大型立体主义雕塑作品《一个女人的头》占据了"玫瑰时期"展厅的中心。《阅读中的女人》是一首献给玛丽-特瑞莎·华勒特的情歌——毕加索的情妇，他的缪斯女神。与此形成强烈对比的是《拿着棒棒糖的男人》，它如同一个不安的起点，将引领你走入艺术家令人痛苦的笔触和条纹。另一个大房间里挂满了一系列轻松活泼的油毡版画。其中也有一些视觉的双关。用纸裁剪出的作品《领带》上，四只用蜡笔绘成的眼睛从领带的"假结"一直延伸到领带末端。这是毕加索送给纽约现代艺术博物馆第一任馆长，以好眼力闻名的阿尔弗雷德·巴尔的礼物。

Most of the Met’s Picassos came as bequests or gifts. In his catalogue essay, the exhibition’s curator, Gary Tinterow, wittily tells the story of how they came to be where they are. It is fun to match the works on view with the people who gave them, speculating about the characters of the benefactors. Scofield Thayer, a poet and publisher, favoured dreamy Picassos with the odd bit of pornography thrown in. Alfred Stieglitz, photographer and art dealer, preferred edgy, angular cubist works on paper. Jacques and Natasha Gelman, film buffs, seemed to concentrate on nervy, aggressive images.

大都会博物馆毕加索藏品的大部分来自遗赠或礼物。在本次毕加索展览负责人，Gary Tinterow的目录文章里，他俏皮地讲述了这些作品的来龙去脉。将这些作品和他们馈赠者的性格特质联系起来，是颇有趣味的。（边看这些展品，边把它们和捐赠人联系起来，想想是他们会是些什么样的人，这倒是挺有意思的。）诗人和出版商Scofield Thayer推崇爱异想天开时期的毕加索，作品中带有些许可有可无的色情味道。Alfred Stieglitz是一位摄影师和艺术品经销商，他对那些锐利的、带有棱角的纸上立体主义作品情有独钟。Jacques Gelman和Natasha Gelman都是电影迷，他们似乎专注于那些紧绷的、具有侵略性的画面。

From its opening in 1870, the Met showed contemporary art. But both the art and the men who ran the museum were conservative. During the century that followed, the men remained much the same. Art changed radically.

自1870年开张以来，大都会博物馆一直有当代艺术的展出。然而那些艺术品和博物馆的管理者都是保守一派。之后整个世纪内的继任者也如出一辙。然而在艺术方面却发生了翻天覆地的变化。

In 1921 champions of impressionist and post-impressionist art from France proposed a show. The Met’s trustees were afraid it would provoke public outrage and Bryson Burroughs, its director, thought Picasso a madman. But the modernists, including Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, an heiress and sculptor, kept up the pressure and, reluctantly, the Met went ahead. There was a press uproar. “Friends” of the museum issued a pamphlet giving warning of its moral decay.

1921年，法国的印象主义和后印象主义先锋们想要举办一次展览。当时大都会博物馆的理事们担心会激怒公众。馆长Bryson Burroughs觉得毕加索是个疯子。然而，包括Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney（女继承人，雕塑家）在内的现代主义者们顶住了压力，坚持要进行展览，大都会万般无奈之下，只好同意。当时的记者们一片喧哗。博物馆的“朋友们”发行了一本小册子，用来警示其沦丧的道德标准。

A quarter of a century later Stein bequeathed Picasso’s portrait to the Met. It may seem a perverse decision for a self-declared modernist. But she had a stupendous ego. In her view the work was a collaboration between two 20th-century geniuses: the artist and his sitter. It deserved, it demanded, a secure home. In 1946, when Stein wrote her will, MoMA was only 15 years old. The Met was established and rich.

二十五年后斯坦把毕加索为自己所画的肖像捐给了大都会博物馆。对于自诩现代主义者的她而言，看起来这可能是个乖张的决定。然而她曾是那么惊人地自负。在她看来这幅作品是二十世纪两位天才之间的合作：画家和他的模特。这副作品值得有，也必须有一个安全的藏身之处。1946年，当斯坦女士写下她的遗嘱时，纽约现代艺术博物馆只有十五年历史，而相比之下大都会博物馆则盛名久远，藏品也更丰富。

Luckily for the Met others too found this a persuasive argument. For the museum had no acquisition policy. There was no targeting of works to fill gaps. The helter-skelter collection just accumulated. None of Picasso’s pots and plates came to the Met; there is nothing of his imaginative metal sculpture. The weight is on early works: the blue, rose and classical periods leading to cubism. What might seem a limitation gives the show a freshness that retrospectives often lack.

大都会博物馆是幸运的，其他馈赠者也觉得斯坦的理由很有说服力。博物馆没有任何获得藏品的相关政策，也没有计划用特定作品来填补缺口。于是来一件收藏一件，就这样逐渐积少成多。毕加索的陶罐和盘子艺术品，还有他那些想象力丰富的金属雕塑作品都没有来到大都会。大都会所收藏的主要是他早期的作品：从蓝色时期、玫瑰时期、古典时期，到后来的立体主义时期。这看似有限的收藏却给展出带来了一丝新鲜感，这种新鲜感正是回顾展所缺乏的。

A degree of balance is achieved at the exhibition’s end. The last room is hung with 119 prints from Picasso’s Suite 347, aquatints and etchings made in 1968, five years before he died. They are a visual autobiography. Here is the artist with his models and his mentors, among them Raphael and Velázquez. There are horses and musketeers, lovers and lots of women with their legs open wide.更多信息请访问：http://www.24en.com/

展出的最后一部分达到了某种程度的平衡。最后一个展厅挂着119副毕加索《347套房》系列版画、凹版腐蚀制版画和铜版画。这些作品创作于艺术家逝世前五年的1968年。它们是毕加索的视觉自传。这里你能看到他和他的偶像们和导师们在一起，其中就有拉斐尔和委拉斯开兹。这些作品中你能看到马、火枪手、情人和许多大腿张开的女人。

Cynics may suppose that this exhibition of the Met’s own treasures is a bid to make the best of recession cutbacks (shows of pictures on loan are expensive). The museum’s director, Tom Campbell, insists that this is not so: “this is not the Met in lockdown mode.” Instead, it reflects his decision to increase the attention given to the museum’s magnificent permanent collection. Big loan-shows are on the way. But so are more in-house blockbusters.

讽世者可能会猜测这次大都会博物馆展出自己的珍品其实是想要从经济衰退中获取最大的利益（借画来展出的费用是很昂贵的）。馆长Tom Campbell坚持声明事实并非如此：“大都会没有停止不前。“相反，这次展出折射出馆长的决定，即增加人们对博物馆永恒恢弘的收藏品的注意力。通过借画的大型展出正在酝酿中。更多博物馆的自家珍藏也会展出。