An Oral History of Picasso in Palestine

In 2010, artist Michael Baers learned of Khaled Hourani’s plan to bring Picasso’s 1943 painting Buste de femme to Ramallah for an exhibition at the International Academy of Art, Palestine. The two-year effort to coordinate the loan from the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven and stage the exhibition, which took place in June 2011, was hindered by the conditions imposed by the Israeli occupation, necessitating intricate negotiations with shippers, insurers, bureaucrats, and politicians. While this story may be well known, due to press coverage and the  2012 documentary Picasso in Palestine by Hourani and filmmaker Rashid Masharawi, Baers’ graphic novel, An Oral History of Picasso in Palestine, suggests there is more to tell. The result of extensive research, this work retells the story of the Picasso in Palestine exhibition, exploring the history of the project’s gestation as well as its relevance to the question of how Israel actually administers its occupation. Baers’ work offers a sophisticated meta-commentary, charting the intersections of modernism, occupation, statehood, and security, using the graphic novel form to demonstrate that narrativization need not entail a reduction of complexity.