PICASSO AND THE AVANT-GARDE IN PARIS ... IN PHILADELPHIA

Stroll, run, drive--just get to the Philadelphia Museum of Art before May 2nd and experience the amazing Picasso & The Avant-Garde In Paris. (And if you can't, read this.) Well worth the long lines, as the very first gallery brings to vivid life that amazing moment in time when Picasso deconstructed classical painting and created something completely new:  what we now call Modern Art.  The small 1907 work Five Nudes (Study for "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon"), above, and another small study for Lysistrata--which Picasso did blindfolded!--along with colorful, swirling oils by Arthur Beecher Carles, were my personal favorites in the vast exhibit of 214 pieces by avant-garde artists who worked, drank and collaborated in Paris during the opening decades of the twentieth century--and changed the world of art forever.