Today, Explained - Hannah Gadsby and “Pablo-matic" Picasso

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

Comedian Hannah Gadsby railed against Pablo Picasso in “Nanette.” So why are they curating an exhibition timed to the 50th anniversary of his death? Gadsby and author Claire Dederer explain what we should do with art from monstrous artists. This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Michael Raphael, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 2018, Netflix released Nanette, a viral stand-up special from the comedian Hannah Gadsby. It was an odd show because it wasn't entirely funny. Gadsby was quite angry about some things, including the artist and sometime misogynist Pablo Picasso. Picasso freed us from slavery, people, he really did. You know, he freed us from the slavery of having to reproduce believable three-dimensional reality on a two-dimensional surface. Picasso said, no, run free. You can have all the perspectives from above, from below, inside out. Thank you, Picasso. What a hero. Thank you. But tell me, any of those perspectives are woman's. Fifty years after the anniversary of Picasso's death,

there are celebrations of his work happening all around the world. Gatsby has co-curated an exhibition of his art and the work of others at the Brooklyn Museum. And today on Today Explained, along with Hannah Gatsby, we will examine the art monster. The all-new FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino is bringing you more action than ever. We'll see you next time. And to top it all off, quick and secure withdrawals. Get more everything with FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Visit connectsontario.ca. You're listening to Today Explained. It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King with comedian Hannah Gadsby. So, Hannah, you studied art history, including Picasso, and then you made a bold decision to talk about him in a comedy special.

It is a bold decision, thank you, because it's very difficult to talk about a visual medium just through chat. So that was, you know, an exciting idea just in and of itself. But the show was about cultural misogyny and the effects that it had. So it felt like it was bringing these two parts of myself into the conversation. I studied art history and so I knew about this conversation and I just got to a point where I was sick of it. I was sick of just like, well, this is what artists have to be. They either have to be terrible monsters or suffering.

And I just reject that idea. I just think life will deliver suffering. You don't have to manufacture it. You don't have to nurture it. You don't have to lay it, you know, prepare the soil. It just will come. So I was just in this really frustrated place where, you know, I felt really restricted about what I was allowed to do. It's like, you've got to be funny, you've got to be funny, you've got to be a slave to the punchline. But yet, like successful men were allowed to be monsters, yet I wasn't allowed to be a

little bit self-serious on stage. So Nanette was just like, well, come on then. When you kind of went after him in the special in Nanette, did you sense the conversation around Picasso was shifting? Or had the conversation already shifted and you were saying what all the art people already know? No, I don't think, look, the Picasso of Nanette sort of got lost in the tidal wave of all the other reactions. Like that stand-up special that person did, where it was joke, joke, jokes, and then like, now here's all the pain behind it. I don't want to know the truth behind this. I signed up for comedy.

She talks about her various rapes that she's hit over the years. And you're like, hilarious. It's just not comedy. You must admit that Hannah Gadsby is not funny. So I'm just sort of coming to terms with the Picasso aspect of Nanette. I've been sort of dealing with the backlash of the comedy community first. So it is well known. What isn't challenged, though, is that it's a bad thing.

I just think they're just like, well, he was a monster. It was a different time. We still love him. And was it that bad? And that's the conversation all the time. So you've got to separate the artist from the artist. And I'm like, you can't separate an artist from their art in this world because we're artists first. We are obsessed with artists as gods and their idols

and we're seeing that play out now. So I think Picasso is incredibly relevant because we don't know how to talk about monsters. We don't know how to deal with them. We don't know how to have an adult conversation around abusive geniuses, so to speak. Johnny Depp just got a seven-minute standing ovation in Cannes. Like, this is a conversation we seem incapable of having and incapable of seeing women as humans and as people with potential and as people with, you know,

a relevant humanity. It's almost boring. It's so frustrating. Do you think if an artist is told from a young age, it doesn't matter how talented you are, sir, you have to be nice and you have to be normal. Does he act nice and normal? Look, normal's not, I'm not going to ask normal of anybody. But this is bigger than individuals. This is about the cultures that situate themselves around success. And it's also a story about fame. Fame impacts an artist. You know, I've experienced a little bit of success recently.

I don't know if you noticed. But it's certainly changed my life. I hear the word no a lot less now because people have a vested interest in me. And that, I think, it cannot not change a person. The conversation around Picasso seems very sort of, you know, almost it gives up. You know, it's like, well, you can't do anything about it now.

It is what it is. It was a different time and Gigi's done a lot of paintings. They're great and they're worth a lot. And as a historical figure, you can't change that. But as an historical figure, that is interesting to where and who we are now. And we're still stuck in that really toxic place. And I think it's the world that we build around artists

and the machines of success and profit that we build around artists that is where the work has to be done. Artists just want to create. People who have creative urges just want to create. And you can do that without operating from a cruelty-first perspective. Let's talk about the art and the exhibit. And the first question to you, I swear to God I'm serious, is Picasso good?

Is he a good artist? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. It's very difficult to deny that. I don't think people like him. Like, I think his work is difficult. I think the art world is very happy with their decision

to put him on the pedestal. They have good reason to celebrate his technical prowess and he certainly has a long and interesting oeuvre. But I think he represents a time in modern art that sort of is when people stop being accessible to a broader public. Picasso's work is not having a conversation with a broader public. So it's very difficult for people

to look at a Picasso and know why it's good. But that doesn't make him irrelevant. You know, I don't think art should have to be beautiful any more than I think comedy has to be funny. But I think it is an interesting thing that, you know, so many people know who Picasso is, assume he's important, accept that he's important, but many people know who Picasso is, assume he's important, accept that he's important, but look at his work and go, weird. I find it uncomfortable. I don't like it. There's just a lot of people who exist on this earth who would not give a shit if they did not see another Picasso. And here you are co-curating an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum that will include some of his work. Tell me about the exhibition, if you would.

It was put together as part of a global celebration of the 50th anniversary of his death. And so understanding that the world was going to be full of Picasso chat, when I was approached by the Brooklyn Museum, I thought, do you know what, I think that chat could do with an antagonistic voice. And an outsider, I'm an outsider to the art world, so I don't have any problems with being rejected by them. The art world can't banish me because I don't live there.

And I just want people to laugh at Picasso. It's all part of my grand plan of emasculation and, you know, plummeting his stocks. I think when someone's on a pedestal, it's important to laugh at them. I just think we should be able to have these conversations without being so frightened that reputations are going to be destroyed. Like, it's just how it is. And interrogating history and the previous versions of ourselves is a really great way to understand where we are now. But I've also included a lot of feminist pieces.

The exhibition is probably half and half Picasso and feminist pieces. There's a few nice bits from Picasso, so you will be able to walk in and go, oh, yeah, that's a good Picasso. But I've also included Picassos that are a little underwhelming and I think that's important. I think it's really important when you're talking about Picasso to recognise and show that not all of his work is equal, not all of his work is good.

He was prolific, but people place importance on it because it's profit. And I wanted to put that on the wall. And a lot of the feminist pieces that I chose are enormous and they're really, again, part of the project of emasculation of Picasso. He's got tiny little unimpressive prints next to these huge feminist statements by some black American feminists. So we've got Dinda McKinnon, Mickalene Thomas and Renee Cox and then we've got some older feminist artists as well

who are not necessarily with us anymore, Louise Bourgeois who I would argue is the greatest artist of the 20th century, Marilyn Minter, May Stevens. So it's like really great voices. Picasso died in the 70s and he's called the greatest artist of the 20th century. He wasn't there for the last 30 years. So just by claiming that, just by pinpointing an entire century on one individual, I just feel like that's really disrespectful to everyone who came after this in the 70s, art movements. I think it's disrespectful to people who were contemporary to Picasso. He didn't create in a vacuum. He was part of a zeitgeist. And I think if you're going

to understand who Picasso is, you have to put him within the zeitgeist that he was participating in. And so I wanted to, you know, acknowledge the context of time and place, which is Brooklyn and now, with works that speak to that. These artists are also really funny. I feel like feminist art has been sealed off into this vacuum of humorlessness. And they're really funny. There's really funny pieces in here and really, you know, talking about serious things in really interesting, engaging ways. But, you know, these artists, you know, feminist artists from the 70s, you know, really pushed form, you know, like medium.

What mediums can you use? They brought in, you know, protest performance art. They incorporated video medium. I want the exhibition to sort of like remind people that the 20th century is a rich tapestry of voices. It is so interesting to hear you say that because as I was, you know, I was doing research for this interview. I'm looking at the exhibition and I was thinking about last fall I was in London and I saw this Cornelia Parker exhibit. Cornelia Parker is an artist who physically blows things up, like with explosives. She rolls over things with tanks.

It is so dope. It is so funny. It struck me, you know, someone who knows nothing, as very good art. And I thought, why doesn't Hannah Gadsby lend a name to someone like Cornelia Parker and like leave Picasso out of it? But maybe it doesn't work that way. I don't know. Well, nobody's asked me to do that. I'm not a curator. I'm not from this world. So I'm not like, here's what I want to do. This is slim pickings. This is the scrap table. I've picked it up. But, you know, context is really interesting. You know, having people experience Picasso in a different context,

which in this case is, you know, the feminist lens, I think is interesting. You know, I can't destroy Picasso, nor would I want to. I can't, you know, stop people from investing in him and making a lot of money out of him, et cetera, et cetera. So I don't, I'm not wasting my time on that. He is part of the conversation. He's very present now. So you've got to work in the context that you have. And so this is how I've chosen to do it. Do you suspect he will always be relevant? Is he one of those game changing artists that, you know, a thousand years later we're talking about Michelangelo?

Is he that kind of guy? Well, I would argue that he's not relevant. Ooh. His art's not relevant now. Huh? It's a historical object. It's dead art. It was very relevant at the time of producing it.

That's what makes it a really important cultural object, you know. It's a very important part of history. It was a real pivot point of art history. So, yes, he'll always be relevant in that context, but the art itself, the objects themselves, I would argue don't have a lot of relevance to people who are alive today because we've moved on. We've moved on.

But I would argue that the interesting thing about Picasso is the conversation around his monstrosity. That's the only interesting thing about him right now, is that conversation, because we don't know how to have that conversation. We don't know what to do about that. I get the feeling we want to do better, but we just can't let go of this idea

that in order to be good at art, you have to be a terrible person. Coming up, maybe you're not wild about Picasso, but what about Michael Jackson or Roman Polanski or Woody Allen? A conversation about the fan's dilemma. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting

so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained ramp.com slash explained r a m p.com slash explained cards issued by Sutton bank member FDIC terms and conditions apply. Bet MGM authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM.

And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM, a sportsbook worth a slam dunk and authorized gaming partner of the NBA. BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only.

Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. I had been thinking about this problem as somebody who had written previously about the filmmaker Roman Polanski and learned a lot about his crime, and yet still I loved his work. And to me, that seemed a really interesting problem and dilemma. As Today Explained, we're back with Claire Dieter. She's a writer and a critic, and she has a new book out called Monsters,

A Fan's Dilemma. Claire had been writing about art monsters for a couple of years when Me Too happened, and she started realizing that many people were struggling with the same questions she was. Can you separate a bad person from great art? One thing that really changed for me was kind of questioning this idea that the greatness of the work could be ascertained by any one person or that there was an authority that could tell us what work is great enough to withstand kind of our knowledge of these bad behaviors. And instead, I started to see the problem

as a conflict between each individual person's love of the work and each individual person's biography that makes them more or less able to tolerate or engage with someone who's done such a crime. So I came to see it more and more as a subjective experience rather than something that could be sort of universally decided by some authority. Do you still like Roman Polanski's movies? Yes, undoubtedly. I was a film critic for many years, and I was a film student in college. And, you know, I could stand in the place of authority and say, I think they're very important works, and I feel confident that I'd be right. But more than that, and more interestingly to me as a writer and critic and thinker on this subject, is the fact that I just love the films, that they're important to me. And I think when we talk about this, we talk a lot about the emotional experience and the kind of

ethical experience of responding to the rotten thing the person did. But I think it's also important to remember that we love art and that it's meaningful to us. And so I'm trying to talk about that side of it as well. Tell me about the so-called monsters that you wrote about. Who's in your book? I did write about Picasso quite a bit. And I wrote about Hemingway. I wrote about Plansky. I wrote about Woody Allen. I wrote about the minimalist artist Carl Andre, and I also went on to write about various women. But the women I wrote about, I was thinking about them in a more expansive idea of who'd done something awful, but I started to think about people who had done we couldn't escape our knowledge of someone's biography and we couldn't escape the way it affects our experience of their art. And because of that I kind of turn away from the image of the monster and toward an idea of the stain. The idea that the work is stained by our knowledge of what the maker has done.

And that became a more interesting place for me to explore. There seem to be two schools of thought on how to deal with these people and with their art. Right now, as you know, there's this ferocious debate about J.K. Rowling. I myself know people who say, I'm not going to engage with her work ever again. I'm done with Harry Potter. I've taken the books out of my house. But then there are people who say, no, you have to separate the art from the artist. I myself will listen to Michael Jackson music, even though the evidence suggests that Michael Jackson did some very, very bad things. Where do you come down in all of this? You still like Roman Polanski, noted. What else do you still engage with where you think the artist is not somebody I like or

even maybe respect, but I do like the art? I'm happy that you asked that question in the way you asked it, that you ask it in a personal way. What I'm really trying to do is say that this is a question that we each bring our biography to. You know, I bring my biography, things I've survived, things I've been through to my experience and thoughts about the person's misdeeds or reported misdeeds. I also bring my biography to the, you know, the love I have of the work. And so each individual person kind of can reside in their subjectivity and their response to this. And the book, in fact, is not seeking to solve the problem for people, but rather to describe the experience of what happens when we consume that work with that knowledge in our minds. So, you know, it's really interesting. You know,

the Michael Jackson situation, I think, is one of the more interesting questions because he's so woven into all our histories. So do I put on a Michael Jackson record anymore? No, I really don't. But when it, you know, it still comes across the air to us all the time, right? I constantly hear Michael Jackson when I'm out and about. And do I still love it? And am I still moved by it? Yes. I mean, I can't switch that off. How should we, and you don't seem like a particularly prescriptive person, but I wonder if you've thought about how we should feel when we engage with artwork, knowing what we know about the artist. Should we feel guilty? I love that you used the word prescriptive because that's exactly what I am not. Because what I'm really trying to do is describe feelings and to say that we're having these feelings and they're real and, you know, just telling them to go away doesn't accomplish anything. So you ask if we should feel guilty and I'm not sure that's how feelings work. I don't think we feel what we should feel. If we did, the world would be a lot simpler place and a lot better place probably. But I think that if you love the work, that's important. I think if you feel guilty or sad

about what the accusations are saying, that that can be part of the experience, too. Should we have, like, a universal set of standards around this? I think that the desire for a universal set of standards is a very deep yearning. I think that everybody would ask this question. And I think that from our conversation, you can probably guess my answer is no, because the problem immediately arises, who's going to set the standards? You know, the work that's important to you might not be the work that's important to me that might not be the work that's important to someone else. So if we start to have this kind of authoritative idea that, well, if the work's good enough, we're

still going to consume it. Who gets to decide what that work is? What population? You know, different work is important to different people. So I just think that the idea of a universal set of standards is ultimately going to end up being coercive. And once again, we have to reside in this really uncomfortable place of subjectivity and just acknowledging that we have these, you know, terrible feelings about these people, but we also have this sort of undeniable love. Claire Dieterer is the author of Monsters, A Fan's Dilemma. Hannah Gadsby's show at the Brooklyn Museum opens today and guess what the critics think? It's interesting. Today's episode was produced

by Hadi Mouagdi and edited by Matthew Collette. It was fact-checked by Laura Bullard and engineered by Michael Rayfield. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. Thank you.