One Fine Show: “Paula Rego, Dance Among Thorns” at MUNCH in Oslo |
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One Fine Show: “Paula Rego, Dance Among Thorns” at MUNCH in Oslo
The Portuguese-British artist's largest survey in years reveals a painter of enduring strangeness and power.
Art that involves children can be complicated to absorb when you have none of your own. My press pass gave me one of the earliest looks at the Venice Biennale last week, and I would never have predicted that the Japanese pavilion by Ei Arakawa-Nash would be such a hit among my colleagues, because it involves hauling a heavy-looking baby doll to various stations around the room. But it turns out that many people really like babies, and grant them all kinds of aesthetic and behavioral leeway. My own taste favors stuff more like the installation by Paula Rego (1935-2022) that appeared in the 59th Venice Biennale’s main exhibition, “The Milk of Dreams,” which featured mirrored images of childbirth and child abuse, alongside a menagerie of grotesque and traumatized dolls.
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