Special Project - Mike Bidlo

To complement After Matisse/Picasso, P.S.1’s exhibition inspired by MoMA’s Matisse Picasso exhibition, New York-based artist Mike Bidlo creates Matisse/Picasso: A Cross Examination. In his latest experiment of contemporary re-visioning of the classics, Bidlo creates large-scale murals of Picasso’s and Matisse’s heads, appropriated from Matisse Self-Portrait (1906) and Picasso Self-Portrait (1907). The portraits will be painted directly on two adjacent walls in the corner gallery on the 3rd floor.

Mike Bidlo (b. 1953) is well known for his appropriation of paintings and sculptures by 20th century masters such as Pablo Picasso, Fernand Leger, Marcel Duchamp, Giorgio de Chirico, Man Ray, Constantin Brancusi, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Georgia O’Keeffe, among others. He has also restaged the renowned performances of Yves Klein’s Anthropometries, Andy Warhol's Factory, and Jackson Pollock’s action painting. Bidlo’s “homages” challenge the art market’s authenticating role and question the modernist canon —which places originality and exclusivity supreme—by validating appropriation as a unique form of art making.

Mike Bidlo
Special Project