Picasso comes to Fairmount

Finally a nice day here in the city. Your Center City Correspondent and Mrs. CCC took a stroll up to the Art Museum to take in the Picasso exhibit. The show included a lot of Picassos early works and other avant-garde painters and artists. I was never a big fan of Cubism, the art movement that Picasso started. Deconstructing people and scenes and still lifes to rectangular shapes is not my cup of tea, but it was the way these artists saw reality. They were either drinking some bathtub wine or smoking some hellacious dope. What was surprising was that most of the exhibit came right from the museum’s own collection; they did not have to scour other museums for this show. I never realized they had so many Picassos, they must keep them in the attic and only bring them out for special occasions.

A lot of the artists “are influenced by” or “emulate” other artists. If their forte was writing instead of painting, they’d all be accused of plagiarism and their work discredited. A couple of times you’d be looking at a painting thinking it’s one guy, and voila, it’s somebody who “worked in the same genre.” One guy who did impress me was Ferdnand Leger. He came later than Picasso and his works showed an urban vitality which I liked. I guess I like a sense of place in my artwork. That’s why I like Cezanne, he painted the same mountain about 50 times, so you get to see it all seasons and moods. The show was jammed for 11 AM on a Friday morning – doesn’t anybody work anymore?


Afterwards, we walked up Fairmount Avenue and had a nice lunch. It’s been two weeks since the last snow storm, and it’s 50 degrees out, and the big topic of conversation was how much snow is left in the neighborhood. Some streets haven’t seen a plow since the Goode administration. So not only can’t they move their cars, but the trash trucks can’t get down the street, so the snow might melt but it will be replaced with mounds of trash. One guy said he carries his trash around the corner where the trash truck can get to. We’re lucky we don’t live on any of those streets.

All for now. Enjoy your weekend.