IS PICASSO NECESSARY?
by Charlie Finch



I have to admit that I shocked the veteran Art in American David Ebony the other night at the Museum of Modern Art opening for "Picasso: Guitars 1912-1914" by asking him this question. David, not for the first time, looked at me avuncularly, and disagreed. I tried to rescue myself by pointing out that Ebony and I were just about the only two critics to unreservedly praise Gabriel Orozco's retro at MoMA last year, and that, if David and I were to think about it, Orozco, both formally and conceptually, comes out of Picasso, and specifically, from Picasso's guitars, the humble objects transformed into multiple amusements.

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