Picasso Black and White. & Gabriel Orozco: Asterisms. Guggenheim Museum

The father of us all. This lavish and beautiful exhibition should also have gray in it’s title because most of the 118 paintings have lots of gray in them. Small complaint as this is a terrific show by one of the great artists of the 20^th century whose work still has the power to startle and amaze. The show goes from 1904 to 1971 and covers most of the themes and images that occupied Picasso for his entire career. One can also get lost in his use of shapes, line, form and composition not to mention his handling of his paint and surfaces. There are also some of his sculptures included which are also wonderful, and Picasso is one of the few (maybe the only) painter for me who is successful with creating sculptures whether they are those marvelous quirky small late cubist assemblages, and painted mental sculptures or his bold and bulky bronze busts some of which resemble the elephant man. On view until Jan. 23. One of the best exhibitions of 2012.

Also on view is another one of Gabriel Orozco’s profoundly dull and pointless installations of found garbage (the museum calls it “items of detritus”) that he collected on a playing field in New York and on a protected coastal biosphere in Baja. His point of course is how terrible we humans are and how bad we are treating our planet, but hey there is also beauty to be found in all this mistreatment of our environment. This is really heavy stuff Orozco is laying on us.  I just don’t get why this guy is getting so much recognition and attention for this garbage, and I was hoping that after his dismal show a few years back at the Moma I would be sparred anymore of his accumulations but here he is again this time at the Guggenheim which makes me wonder just whose Guggenheim he’s been sucking. So here we have lots of found things laid out on the floor of a gallery arranged in groups i.e. rocks, rubber, glass, wood, light bulbs etc. Simplistically conceived and somewhat condescending to the viewer, the objects just sit there and since this piece or carpet of garbage really doesn’t work on its own, he also hammers his visual concept home with large gridded photos of the individual objects all organized by material, color and size that line one wall of the gallery as if this will make up for the vapidness of the work. But they are salable. There is also a tape playing in the background of ocean sounds, giving the installation a new age touch. Far out. One of the worst exhibitions of 2012.