I promise I didn't come to Korea just to see Western art. Really. There are great numbers of contemporary art galleries in Seoul – it is, after all, a city of 20 million. But if I wanted to see Western art today, right now, besides Picasso I could see exhibitions of work by Rouault, Paul Klee, Kaethe Kollwitz, and Mark Rothko.
Yesterday I wound up going to the Seoul Museum of Art and saw "The Great Century: Picasso." It's almost all portraits and self-portraits, the people in Picasso's life.
As always, when I see a large group of work by Picasso, or even a small group, I'm amazed at his skill, his range, his inventiveness. And I understand why people use that irritating word, "protean."
The Museum has carefully arranged sections for each of seven lovers and wives. What was with them? Why would anyone sign up to sit over and over again, be looked at hour after hour? The results are, alas for my politics, very rich, especially the many prints in a range of printmaking mediums.
The last painting is a staring self-portrait in grays. The head is hard to separate out from the swoopy background. As we left, my son said, "for an old, bald guy, he sure gave himself a lot of hair."
Later I turned into the Sun Gallery, in Insa-dong, and found metal jewelry and other objects, by Lisa Vershbow. Clean lines, fresh palette, it was all art to enjoy. A trained metalsmith, Ms. Vershbow is also married to a U.S. diplomat, and so has traveled extensively. Before coming to the U.S. embassy in Seoul, they had been in Moscow. Her work in the Sun Gallery, and on her website (lisavershbow.com) displays a kind of cheerful Constructionism.
More later.
