The Alhambra
On Tuesday, December 17th, a new exhibition opened in the museum at the Alhambra in Spain. Like the Joan Mitchell/Claude Monet show at the Fondation Louis Vuitton (mired in controversy over a related Louis Vuitton ad campaign), the Alhambra exhibition Reflections looks at the dialogue between two artists separated by vast lengths of time. This time, museum visitors are looking at the modern master Pablo Picasso and the contemporary celebrity artist Jeff Koons.
The Museo de Bellas Artes in Granada is located within the Alhambra itself. It is part of the Palacio de Carlos V, a sixteenth-century palace built into the structure following the reconquest of Spain from the Islamic emirates that ruled much of the peninsula for centuries. The new Reflections exhibition is a collaboration between the Museo de Bellas Artes and the Museo Picasso in Málaga. It is one installment in a planned exhibition series “placing Picasso’s work in dialogue with leading contemporary artists in some of Andalusia’s greatest cultural locations.” According to Museo Picasso director Miguel López Remiro, the Alhambra exhibition also serves to show how museums can serve a new purpose: as “an amplified space where art transcends boundaries and engages in dialogue with multiple contexts”. The show uses works by both artists to examine the dialogue between the two. And while the show is small, featuring only five works in total among the Museo de Bellas Artes permanent collection, the connections they highlight are effective.
The most notable example on display is Picasso’s 1923 painting The Three Graces and Koons’s sculpture Three Graces, which deal with the same mythological subject. In Greco-Roman mythology, the Graces were the embodiments of beauty and harmony and have been a subject for Western artists from antiquity to the Renaissance. Both Picasso and Koons draw from the same artistic motifs often used with the Graces since the classical period. Picasso created a painting that drew from older depictions but maintained his own style regarding form and color. Koons, however, took a different approach. The influence of classical and neoclassical sculpture, like the Graces as depicted by Antonio Canova, is more apparent in the Koons sculpture. But by using polished stainless steel and bright colors, Koons makes the subject his own, bringing the same glimmer and playfulness as with his other work. By showing these two works together, the Alhambra exhibition aims to “illuminate the continuity and transformation of artistic inspiration, offering visitors a unique perspective on the dialogue between tradition and modernity.”
The museum marked the exhibition’s opening with a talk between Jeff Koons and Joachim Pissarro discussing Picasso’s influence. Reflections. Picasso/Koons will run at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Granada through March 16, 2025.