Picasso’s first word, apparently, was “pencil”. Well we know what he could do with one of those, for he was a superlative draughtsman, but what’s remarkable is that he achieved apparently effortlessly those same beautiful lines with the more intractable medium of a drypoint needle or a burin, an incising tool, on a metal plate.
Drypoint and etching are tricky techniques; so too are lithographs and sugar aquatint that he adopted later. But he mastered them all with insolent ease as did the masters he most admired, Goya and Rembrandt.
He could, then, produce several copies of one work and sell more, more cheaply, but printmaking itself captivated him. Why else would he have devoted seven months in 1968 in a flurry of creative energy on the 347 Suite of etchings (yep, 347 of them), as inventive, as scabrous and as mordantly funny as anything he produced before?
Every aspect of Picasso’s development is reflected in his printmaking and thus in this excellent show. It’s the early work that is likely to stay with you. Paris, where he moved as a young man in 1904, was a printmaking capital, and it was there that he produced his first professional print in etching and scraper. What a tale lies in the poignant Frugal Meal, an account of love and poverty, as a shrunken couple sit together but separately over an empty plate with a piece of bread and a bottle of wine.
Equally striking are his circus scenes, in which we can include one of the most subversive depictions ever of Salome’s dance, with fat, complacent Herod in Egyptian dress, contemplating a nude, high-kicking little Salome; her maidservant looks on, disregarding the head of John the Baptist on her lap, aimlessly fingering his long hair.
The First World War mercifully spared Picasso as a Spaniard and it meant he got to travel to Italy. We see the classical influence at work in the Vollard Suite where the Minotaur is at large.
There are also countless depictions of the Greek profile of his new mistress, Marie Therese. The series comprises perhaps his loveliest etchings. The Sculptor, Model and Sculpted Bust, for instance, is all clean, lovely lines; the sculptor and model peer at his work, but – surprise! – it’s a contemporary head, so not a bit classical. The Three Graces feature too, but as the backdrop to the smirking sculptor.
As for the Minotaur, famously representing a) Picasso himself or b) the bestial instincts of the male, it’s fair to say that this may not be the ideal show for those easily triggered or feminists. The old goat is priapic from start to finish and the erotic charge is most evident where the man-beast is on the point of sexual violence, as in the Minotaur with a female Centaur, though the Female Bullfighter II runs it close – the woman flung tauntingly on an agonised horse, her breasts the focal point.
There is no point in deploring the unlikelihood of consent in the Minotaur Caressing a Sleeping Woman (Picasso did not choose his titles); you go with it. Interestingly, it’s a play on a similar theme by Rembrandt, displayed nearby.
After the war Picasso made creative play with lithographs, though it’s another technique, sugar aquatint, which he deploys to brilliant effect in a striking depiction of a huge hen where the technique allows for fluffy feathers and the strokes of vicious big claws.
It also creates a softer line for the depiction of yet another mistress, Jacqueline, pony-tailed and naked except for her bracelet and rings. It’s at this point in the show that we get an account of the actual techniques; it would be useful to encounter them earlier.
Linocut for Picasso is an opportunity to break into big bold colour as in the exuberant still life sequence in the poster image for the show: all bright red, yellow and green, the more stunning for the monochrome beforehand.
Picasso’s natural lubriciousness showed no sign of abating in later life. The 347 sequence has as much filth as any element of his work, which is saying something; the lithographic and graphic depictions of Raphael having sex with his young mistress lose little to the imagination, and the voyeurs only add to the pornographic effect. Same goes for his repeated depictions of Celstina, a sixteenth century procuress, displaying her girls to the clients.
There is an almost Rowlandesque bawdiness about the series, a comic element to the endless pursuit of naked girls by eager men; the softer lines of the sugar aquatints in some prints only add to the effect.
Contemporary politics gets in too: de Gaulle features here, only the General loses some of his authority on account of his willy being on show. Endless, ripe inventiveness and schoolboy humour then, even in old age.
This exhibition is so comprehensive because it draws on the British Museum’s own splendid collection of Picasso prints including the entire Vollard sequence and the 347 Suite. What’s more, it can illumine Picasso’s work with some pieces by other masters that inspired him. An eye-opener of a show, in more ways than one.
British Museum, November 7 to March 30; britishmuseum.org
