Is it possible to have too much Picasso?

Why can't the world get enough of Pablo Picasso? On the 50th anniversary of his death, it seems the appetite for the Spanish master is inexhaustible.

Picasso's ceramics, Picasso's sculptures, Picasso and feminism, Picasso's use of white, celebrity photographs of Picasso... the list of exhibitions marking the half-century since his death on April 8, 1973 runs on and on.

"Picasso gobbles everything up, and still we are hungry for more," grandson Olivier Widmaier-Picasso told AFP, adding that he was "fascinated by the number of curators, historians and researchers that continue to find new angles to explore."

Explaining his ubiquity is another matter.

The genius of his talent seems largely beyond dispute, and this combined with his emergence at the start of the 20th century, just as the last obstacles to free expression were being dismantled, leaving him free to explore in every direction.

And he simply never stopped, working from his teens right up to his death on the Cote d'Azur at 91.

"He remains above everyone," said Bernard Blistene, a former director of the Pompidou Centre modern art museum in Paris.

"The permanent invention, the journey across all the great currents of modernity, the continuous experimentation for 80 years, the desire to please and displease... all of it is without equal," Blistene told AFP.

No more 'muses'

The MeToo movement has slightly rattled the elevated plinth on which Picasso's reputation stands, as accusations that he was an abusive misogynist towards his wives and girlfriends trigger calls for a reappraisal.

"We must stop talking about the women in his life as 'muses.' Some committed suicide, others sank into madness," said Emilie Bouvard, former...