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Garth Bowden

The Artists Studio




Does the past exist complete, discrete and done with? Or does it continue to change in relation to the present ? Perhaps it is not concluded, not definitive but on the contrary a fiction that changes with each view in its direction?


Change the context of Picasso’s creations and they could be strange cartoon characters. 

Both Picasso and Disney were self proclaimed entertainers.  Did he influence popular culture? Did popular culture influence him?


Maybe the artist himself was a great trickster...Picasso's quixotry can be found in something he said to the writer Giovanni Papini in 1952: "Today, as you know, I am famous, I am rich. But when I am alone with myself, I haven't the courage to consider myself an artist in the ancient sense of the word. Great painters are people like Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt, Goya. I am only a public entertainer who has understood the times and has exploited as best he could the imbecility, the vanity and the greed of his contemporaries. Mine is a bitter confession, more painful than might seem, but it has the merit of being sincere." 




The Picasso Suite


This series is a homage to my childhood hero. I fell in love with a book called Picasso and Jacqueline by David Douglas Duncan when I was 19. I loved the scenes of Picasso in his home surrounded by his work, friends, pets and everyday life.

It seemed a magical world where art and life overlapped in a playful game that was on the one hand joyous and on the other a fevered race to outrun or outwit death through his creative immersion.

Picasso at his easel had a certain parallel with the toreador in the bull ring. In each case it was a fight to the death.




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