Yve-Alain Bois to Discuss Picasso and Abstraction in Institute for Advanced Study Lecture

Yve-Alain Bois, Professor in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, will a give a public lecture, “Picasso and Abstraction: Encounters and Avoidance,” on Wednesday, April 6, which will take place at 5:30 p.m. in Wolfensohn Hall on the Institute campus. This event is sponsored by the Friends of the Institute.

In this lecture, Bois will examine several encounters, or rather false encounters, of Picasso with abstraction. Bois will also discuss the way in which pioneers of abstract art (Mondrian in particular) thought of their own art as the continuation of Picasso’s.

“Pablo Picasso did not speak often about abstraction, but when he did, it was either to dismiss it as complacent decoration or to declare its very notion an oxymoron,” said Yve-Alain Bois. “The root of this hostility is to be found in the impasse that the artist reached in the summer 1910, when abstraction suddenly appeared as the logical development of his previous work, a possibility at which he recoiled in horror. But though he swore to never go again near abstraction, he could not prevent himself from testing his resolve from time to time.”

A specialist in twentieth-century European and American art, Bois is recognized as an expert on a wide range of artists, from Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso to Piet Mondrian, Barnett Newman, and Ellsworth Kelly. He has curated and co-curated a number of influential exhibitions, including Piet Mondrian, A Retrospective (1994); L’informe, mode d’emploi (1996); Matisse and Picasso: A Gentle Rivalry (1999); and Picasso Harlequin 1917–1937 (2008). His books include Ellsworth Kelly: Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Reliefs, and Sculpture: Vol. 1, 1940–1953 (2015); Matisse in the Barnes Foundation (2015); Art Since 1900 (with Benjamin Buchloh, Hal Foster, and Rosalind Krauss, 2004); Matisse and Picasso (1998); Formless: A User’s Guide (with Rosalind Krauss, 1997); and Painting as Model (1990). Bois is currently working on several long-term projects, foremost among them the catalogue raisonné of Ellsworth Kelly’s paintings and sculptures, whose second volume (out of five) he plans to finish this year.

A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Bois obtained his doctorate from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (1977). He began his career at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris in 1977. Bois joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University in 1983 and remained there until 1991, at which time he accepted the Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., Professorship of Modern Art in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University. Bois was acting chair of the department in 1999–2000, and chair from 2002–2005. He joined the Faculty of the Institute in 2005.