Picasso exhibition co-curated by comedian Hannah Gadsby, who she confessed to ‘hating’, will delve into the complexities of the artist’s legacy

Hannah Gadsby doesn’t hurt when it comes to Pablo Picasso. The Aussie comedian’s 2018 Netflix comedy special Nanette weaves a searing critique of Picasso’s relationship with his teenage muse Marie-Thérèse Walter, aged 17 to 45 when they first met. “I hate it, but you’re not allowed to,” Gadsby deadpans, because of “cubism.” The womanizing titan of modern art is “sold to us as this passionate, manly, tormented genius” rather than, by Gadsby’s definition, as a misogynist.

After summarizing the history of Western art – including Picasso – as “men painting women as if they were vessels of flesh for their dick flowers”, Gadsby quips: “I think I’ve ruined the whole chance of getting a job in a gallery now.” Not enough Five years later Nanettethe comedian shares with Picasso the poster for an exhibition which, according to the promises of the Brooklyn Museum, will approach “the complex legacy of the artist through a critical, contemporary and feminist lens”.

It’s Pablo-matic: Picasso according to Hannah Gadsbis part of a series of exhibitions organized this year to mark 50th anniversary of the artist’s death. The umbrella program, supported by the French and Spanish governments, is called Picasso Celebration 1973-2023. An avowed Picasso hater may seem like an unlikely guest curator for Brooklyn’s contribution to the celebrations. But Gadsby’s co-curators at the museum, Catherine Morris and Lisa Small, describe the comedian as the “perfect partner” for a show that will bring to the fore “one of the most important conversations happening today in relation to with Picasso” – feminist criticism.

“We were fascinated by Hannah’s engagement with art history,” says Morris, and by Gadsby’s view of Picasso as a case study in “systemic cultural damage by misogyny”. Nanette drew direct parallels between Picasso and latter-day men confronted with #MeToo accounts: Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Woody Allen, Roman Polanski. But the curators reject any idea that the artist is “canceled” in this exhibition. Rather, they say, it seeks to tackle the thorny moral debate catalyzed by #MeToo, about what to do with “good” art made by “bad” people, and with the patriarchy of the world of the art illustrated by Picasso. “We think about creating space for these conversations to happen, digging into this complexity and not coming to a prescription [message]”, said Little.

Gadsby was instrumental in developing themes for associations of Picasso’s work in Brooklyn with pieces from the museum’s main collection of feminist art, much of which has been made since the artist’s death in 1973. Alongside Picasso’s depictions of the reclining female nude, the studio as “a sexually charged space” and the myth of the minotaur – the artist’s half-man, half-beast alter ego – will hang works that affirm the bodily and creative agency of women.

Among them, Joan Semmel’s “tremendous” double nude Intimacy Autonomy (1974), painted from the artist’s point of view looking at herself and her partner’s body in bed; Judy Chicago’s illustration of Anais Nin’s female eroticism; and Betty Tompkins’ montage of a #MeToo apology statement over Artemisia Gentileschi’s image of biblical lust, Susanna and the Elders. “Even if they don’t directly engage one-on-one with Picasso,” says Small, these feminist artists were responding to “what his work represents in this larger institutional system of looking at women’s bodies in the ‘art “.

The exhibition aims to deconstruct the “Picasso machine” but also to “reframe priorities”, says Morris. Picasso’s pictorial obsession with his female muses and the recurring motif of artist and model fueled a vast body of work in which sexuality was deeply intertwined with the power of creativity. The final section of the exhibition will be “devoted to female artists actively engaged in reflecting on themselves as creator and subject”, with no Picassos in sight, shifting the terms of creativity from male mastery to the next generation. .

• It’s Pablo-matic: Picasso according to Hannah Gadsby, Brooklyn Museum, New York, June 2-September 24