Huge, impersonal canvases designed for the walls of billionaires: Tate Modern’s Capturing the Moment reviewed
‘Photography has arrived at a point where it is capable of liberating painting from all literature, from the anecdote, and even from the subject. So shouldn’t painters profit from their newly acquired liberty, and make use of it to do other things?’ argued Picasso. The inventor of cubism took advantage of his liberty in ‘Buste de Femme’ (1938) to turn Dora Maar into a precursor of Peppa Pig, flaring her nostrils to form a snout. Perhaps he wanted to teach a photographer a lesson about paint by rubbing her nose in it. Picasso didn’t abandon the subject or the anecdote. He was one of the first modern artists to turn
