The Brooklyn Rail

The Moorish days are ending,
Their nation now enslaved;
Granada’s forts still hold the line,
Yet within, pestilence and misery invade.

From Alpujara’s towers they defend,
Recalling Almanzor’s age now past—
But lacking knights of old,
The Spaniard raises Christian banners fast,
For tomorrow, he will attack 

[…]

This fragment comes from a ballad titled Alpuhara, written in 1829 by the renowned Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz. The poem offers a dramatic and astute portrayal of Granada’s turbulent and enthralling history. After the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in 711 AD, Granada came under Moorish rule until the Catholic Monarchs reconquered it in 1492. These successive shifts in power between Islamic and Christian kingdoms transformed this part of the Iberian Peninsula into a sonorous, multicultural polity— built using the clay of clashing cultures and their rich aesthetic expressions.

It is within the impenetrable walls of the Alhambra, the Moorish fortress of Granada, inside the Renaissance-style Palace of Emperor Charles V (1500–58), that the latest dual exhibition of Jeff Koons and Pablo Picasso takes place. This pairing of two seemingly divergent titans—Picasso, a defining figure of twentieth-century modernism, and Koons, a central force in twenty-first-century contemporary art—reflects the historical clash of civilizations that shaped Granada itself. Yet, as curator Joachim Pissarro’s exhibition Reflections demonstrates, despite their stark stylistic differences, Koons and Picasso converge on a shared artistic obsession: antiquity.

The initial question that demands consideration is as follows: What similarities does Jeff Koons—an artist who attained remarkable prominence by selecting commonplace objects from the middle-class milieu of his own cultural background, repurposing them as alluring artworks for the highbrows—share with antiquity? His name is often linked with the continuation of Dadaism and the ready-made concept, as well as Andy Warhol’s pop cultural imagery, which he transformed into tools for social mobility. However, these associations do not obviously align him with the art of ancient Greece or Rome. The meticulous execution of his works, though impressive, does not convincingly bridge this gap. However, many might not know that behind the work grounded in pastiche, appropriation, and re-appropriation stands a devoted scholar of art history—even his most sensationalist pieces, such as the “Made in Heaven” series, find their roots in the achievements of Western Masters, in this case, Masaccio’s Expulsion from Eden (ca. 1424–27) fresco. Koons explains: “I like the dialogue with art history. It’s about partaking in the community, interacting with the language of art and making different references to other artists or pieces in our history.” ¹ Thus, Koons's objects actively connect the present with the past but also take us into the future, as he famously proclaimed: “In this century, there was Picasso and Duchamp. Now I’m taking us out of the twentieth century.” ²

On the other hand, Picasso’s interest in ancient Greek and Roman art, due to his highly prolific nature, hardly engenders feelings of surprise. However, his systematic engagement with antiquity gained momentum after Pierre Matisse (the painter’s son) responded to Picasso’s dreams of women transforming into fish by suggesting, “Why don’t you illustrate Ovid’s Metamorphoses?”—an idea which promptly found favor with the Swiss publisher Albert Skira.³ Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a compilation of ancient myths and legends written in hexametric verse, spans fifteen books and required Picasso to create thirty etchings on mythological themes. Preparing for this project heightened his sensitivity to the power of myth and deepened his appreciation for themes of love, life, death, beauty, and transience—driving forces in his artistic production, as reflected in this exhibition. Similar to Jeff Koons, who mines the past for inspiration in his contemporary works, Picasso, particularly in his neoclassical paintings, drew from various art historical movements. Given that no European style has been as enduring or pervasive as the classical tradition in articulating longevity, cyclical change, decline, persistence, and resurgence, it is clear why both artists were drawn to it in their artistic explorations.

As its primary point of departure, the exhibition—comprised of only five pieces—centres on the Three Graces, a subject that has captivated artisans and poets for centuries, Ovid among them. The two artists’ interpretations of these deities are separated by nearly a century. Picasso’s The Three Graces (1923) is a monochromatic canvas featuring a delicate charcoal drawing on a grey-primed surface. The work reflects on themes of beauty, joy, lust, and love. By borrowing from the stylistic vocabulary of French Mannerism, Picasso reimagines Zeus’s daughters with an unmistakably modern sensibility. The piece also engages with the motif of the triad—a concept central not only to Picasso’s body of work (Three Women at the Spring [1921], Three Dancers [1925]) but also to major artistic movements and ideological frameworks. Whilst, of course, a two-dimensional work, the study of the three Charities from varied fixed vantage points provides an illusion of three-dimensionality, and as such, they evoke the appearance of ancient sculptures as seen in old black-and-white art history textbooks.

Jeff Koons’s Three Graces (2016–22), a towering sculpture over two meters high, can be seen as a realization of Picasso’s implicit ambition to transcend dimensions. Installed in the colosseum-shaped courtyard of the Palace of Charles V, its mirror-polished stainless steel reflects its surroundings, amplifying the symmetry of the space and lending the scene a cosmic, almost mystical quality—especially when viewed at night. The work disrupts the historical solemnity associated with depictions of the Three Graces, which are often rendered as dignified and commanding. Instead, Koons isolates and augments the spirit of Euphrosyne, the Grace associated with mirth, infusing the sculpture with a playful, exuberant tone.

This contrast underscores a fundamental philosophical tension. Whereas Picasso’s Three Graces aligns with Apollonian ideals—order, rationality, and restraint—Koons’s work is unmistakably Dionysian, embracing excess, sensuality, and spontaneity. This interplay recalls Frederick Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy (1872), in which he argues that Greek culture thrives on the reconciliation of these opposing forces, a book that found favor with Picasso, possibly partially due to Nietzsche’s cult following in Paris prior to the First World War. Here, this synthesis is achieved not within a single work but through the juxtaposition of these two sculptures, each embodying a distinct artistic and philosophical ethos.

Another way Nietzsche’s ideas may have influenced Picasso is visible in this exhibition. The philosopher argued for the primitive origins of Greek culture, describing it as a “prehistory in Asia Minor, as far back as Babylon and the orgiastic Sacaea,”⁴ thereby linking it to so-called barbarian and tribal traditions. This perspective resonates in Picasso’s sculptural works, particularly Head of a Warrior (1933), which suggests that, for him, the perceived divide between classical antiquity and tribal cultures was far less rigid than traditionally assumed. Executed around the same time and in the same stylistic vein as Head of Woman (1931), which evokes a sense of incompleteness, as though it had been chipped from a full-bodied ancient temple statue, Head of a Warrior and its voluptuous, swollen, almost eroticized forms recall the aesthetics of tribal art—a connection further reinforced by Picasso’s documented ownership of a Nimba mask from the Baga tribe in Guinea, which bears a striking resemblance to Head of a Warrior (1933).

This dialogue between tribal and classical influences is accentuated by Picasso’s work being placed opposite Koons’s Gazing Ball (David Intervention of the Sabine Women) (2016), a meticulous replica of David’s neoclassical masterpiece. By inserting his signature hand-blown blue gazing ball, Koons collapses temporal parameters, pulling Picasso’s Head of a Warrior—and by extension, its allusions to tribal and ancient influences—into the world of the painting and the gaze of contemporary spectators. In doing so, Koons crystallizes Picasso’s vision of art and history as a continuum rather than a linear progression.

The piece that ultimately ties all the works together within a broader framework of time is Gazing Ball (Standing Woman) (2016). As Pissarro explains in the curatorial text, the sculpture is a replica of a Greek statue once owned by Picasso—already a copy made by the Romans. By integrating his signature midnight-blue reflective ball, Koons ensures that the sculpture exists simultaneously in the past and the ongoing present, aligning with Picasso’s view that art should transcend sequential boundaries. As Picasso famously asserted, “To me, there is no past or future in art. If a work of art cannot live always in the present, it must not be considered at all.”⁵ Koons materialises this notion: his gazing ball reflects not only the surrounding space but also the viewers themselves, rendering the work a dynamic, ever-evolving object whose meaning is shaped by the shifting perspectives of those who engage with it.

In this way, Koons’s intervention mirrors Picasso’s enduring fascination with the theme of the voyeur—a recurring presence in his etchings, where unseen spectators impose their gaze upon his subjects. Gazing Ball (Standing Woman), much like Picasso’s depictions of artist-model relationships, positions the viewer as an active participant in the act of looking. This conceptual thread is made even more explicit by the absence of Sculptor and Model by a Window, with Overturned Sculpted Head (1933) from the exhibition. In this work, a female model—resembling an antique sculpture—gazes into a small mirror akin to Koons’s reflective spheres, while a sculpted male head beneath her, similar to that of Head of a Warrior, acts as both a pedestal and a silent witness to her reflection. The sculptor figure in the background further emphasizes the artist-spectator dynamic, embodying the role of the voyeur, much like the public observing the scene.

Koons’s “Gazing Ball” series does not merely acknowledge history but actively dissolves its linearity. By inserting a contemporary object into classical forms, he disrupts the notion of a fixed past. Instead, he proposes a continuum—one where antiquity, modernity, and the present coexist in a single frame. Through this interplay, the exhibition reinforces a fundamental question: is art a progression, or is it, as Picasso and Koons suggest, an eternal loop of reinvention? Koons affirms this continuity: “The viewer doesn’t need to know these references, but it does give a sense of continuity.”⁶ In this light, Reflections is not just a dialogue between two artists but a meditation on art’s ability to collapse time, which enables us to see history not as a closed chapter but as an active force shaping the present.