Picasso was a much better sculptor than a painter

If you’re anywhere near New York soon, don’t miss the exhibition of Picasso’s sculptures at the Museum of Modern Art. It has restored my love of the great magician.

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As a teenager I had eyes for no one else. He was the obvious god of modern art. Almost all previous art looked boring, and not much subsequent art spoke to me. I suppose I liked the posturing maleness (I also liked The Rolling Stones). But then his paintings gradually lost some of their force (at around the time that Stones songs began to sound dull after the first ten seconds of Dionysian excitement). At Tate Modern’s Matisse Picasso show in 2002 I far preferred the bright canvases of his rival – and still do. And I still feel that many of his paintings are ugly, strident, hectoring – so much about his vision that it’s barely a vision of the world.