A Portrait of Picasso Without Paint

John Richardson has run out of women to build Picasso shows around but that doesn’t mean he’s run out of Picasso shows. Carol Vogel helps him explain the latest Gagosian venture which revolves around the artist and cameras:

“It’s a subject few people have gotten into,” Mr. Richardson said the other day, perched on the edge of a sofa in his Manhattan loft near Union Square, poring over images of Picasso, his studio and his work, as well as snapshots he took of his wives and mistresses. “It’s proved much more complex, fascinating and eye-opening than I’d ever imagined,” he said. “Picasso always had cameras, Leicas mostly, although we can’t find any surviving ones.”

But thousands of the artist’s photographs, as well as a cache of his home movies, have survived. Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, the artist’s grandson, has a trove, which has never been shown publicly, and they form the core of “Picasso & the Camera,” a show opening on Tuesday at the Gagosian Gallery on West 21st Street in Chelsea. Organized by Mr. Richardson with Valentina Castellani and Michael Cary, directors of the gallery, it will include more than 40 paintings, 50 drawings and some 225 photographs, about 10 percent of which will be for sale. Other family members have also lent works to the show, along with collectors and institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Denver Art Museum and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.