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A few years ago, when the Metropolitan Museum loaned Pablo Picasso’s La Douleur (1902-03, pictured, also known as “Erotic Scene” or “The Pain”) to London’s Barbican Centre for a show about sex in art, the blue-period painting proved too hot for the Brits and it was never shown. Now, with its major exhibition of every Picasso work from its permanent collection just a couple weeks away (April 27), ArtsBeat reports that the Met plans to show the controversial (though by most accounts minor) work for the first time in the U.S. along with 300 or so other pieces.
Rather famously, Picasso panned the painting, telling his friend Pierre Daix: “I’ve done worse, but it was a joke by friends.” The Met’s curator of 19th-century, Modern and contemporary art, Gary Tinterow explained that the museum has never shown it before “because it’s not very good,” and not because it shows a rather young boy cold loungin’ while receiving a sexual favor from a naked lady. This pretty much jives with the Met’s recent pro-sex scandal streak.