An extraordinary theatre curtain painted by Pablo Picasso for the 1917 ballet Parade will make a rare appearance when it goes up this month at Two IFC to launch the Hong Kong sector of the Year of France in China festival.
It will be the first time Picasso's fragile Parade has been shown in Asia - and only the 11th time the work has gone on public display since the Centre Pompidou in Paris acquired it more than half a century ago. French President Jacques Chirac is expected to attend the October 12 ceremony in Hong Kong, two days after officially launching the Year of France in China cultural festival in Beijing.
Centre Pompidou executive director Bruno Maquart says the decision to take the theatre curtain out of storage for the occasion is indicative of the importance France attaches to further cultural collaboration with China. 'The work is fragile,' he says. 'It can't be exposed to too strong light. Restoration is very complex.'
Parade was Picasso's first foray into stage and costume design. He made the curtain and cubism-inspired costumes for the ballet, which was created by Serge de Diaghilev for the Russian Ballet. The ballet featured Jean Cocteau's libretto, modern jazz music by Eric Satie and choreography by Leonide Massine.
'Everything was new - the decor, the music, the choreography,' says Isabelle Monod-Fontaine, deputy director for the Pompidou's collection of contemporary art. 'It upset the first audiences.'
The ballet, which depicts a French travelling fair, a form of entertainment for the lower classes, created a stir when it debuted at Paris' Chatelet Theatre in May 1917. Some in the audience, used to seeing only high culture presented in ballet, booed and hissed at the circus- and cubism-inspired costumes. The ballet featured the speed and cacophony of modern society - including sirens, noisy typewriters and gunfire - from which the upper classes wished to escape when they went to the theatre, particularly during the first world war.
Maquart says that, artistically, the curtain marks Picasso's departure from cubism towards more classical forms. By the end of the decade, he moved increasingly towards realism and neoclassicism as he sought to re-establish contact with the so-called art of museums. At the same time, Parade recalls Picasso's 1905-06 Rose Period, when his tableaux took on a lighter tone, and showed his fascination with clowns and circus performers.
