Read this text from The Guardian and answer the following questions:
- How were Picasso’s last days?
- How were the family relationships during his life?
- What’s special about this Picasso Museum?
- What problems did the museum face when Baldassari took its presidency? What happened with her when she left?
- What are the most outstanding pieces of art you can see at the Picasso museum according to the writer? Why?
- What is the impression the writer gets from the museum once reopened?
- How would you describe Picasso’s art after reading the text? Why is he so fascinating?
- Did you find the article interesting? Why? Why not?
Look for these words in the text and match them with their definitions below:
– 1. Slit (n) –(paragraph 1) “The mouth was a straight slit”
– 2. Goad (v) – (paragraph 4) “… he kept goading friends to interpret it”
– 3. Befuddle (v) – (paragraph 8) “… in his various studios and homes beffuddled even his closest friends…”
– 4. Gutsy (adj) – (paragraph 13) “…gutsy experiments with some new idea”
– 5. Turmoil (n) – (paragraph 15) “The turmoil at the museum comes at a suggestive and perilous moment…”
– 6. Hindrance (n) – (paragraph 19) “She was a positive hindrance”
– 7. Glean (v) – (paragraph 23) “…there was anything to be gleaned about Picasso… from the memories of his children”
– 8. Acute (adj) – (paragraph 31) “the French state took an acute interest in its problems”
– 9. To live up to sth (v) – (paragraph 39) “a slight woman who lives up to the image of a French intellectual”
– 10. Scintillating (adj) – (paragraph 41)”…what still makes him shocking and scintillating”
– 11. Berate (v) – (paragraph 46) ”He once berated the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan for…”
– 12. Daub (n) – (paragraph 48) “The painting is an indecipherable network of daubs and scrawls”
– 13. Hold sway – (paragraph 53) “where Picasso’s intense and strange surrealist art holds sway”
– 14. Awe (n) – (paragraph 58) “ I felt exactly the same thing in this “new” Picasso Museum that I used to feel in the old one:owe”
Definitions:
– (a) something that quickly becomes very severe
– (b) feeling of great respect sometimes mixed with fear or surprise
– (c) to confuse someone and make them unable to think clearly
– (d) to be as good as something
– (e) to criticize or speak in an angry manner to someone
– (f) a state of confusion, uncertainty, or disorder
– (g) a straight, narrow cut or opening in something
– (h) have an important influence
– (i) brave and determined
– (j) funny, exciting, and clever
– (k) something that makes it more difficult for you to do something or for something to develop
– (l) to make a person or an animal react or do something by continuously annoying or upsetting them
– (m) to collect information in small amounts and often with difficulty
– (n) an area of thick or sticky liquid on something
– (o) to have power or a very strong influence
