Pablo Picasso should be looming large just now. In theory, the apparently fortuitous overlapping of two of this season’s major exhibitions, “Spanish Painting from El Greco to Picasso: Time, Truth, and History” at the Guggenheim and “Picasso and American Art” at the Whitney ought to focus our attention on the artist whose name is synonymous with modern art.[1] In theory, these concurrent shows should make us consider Picasso as a bridge between past and present, between the Old World and the New. We should be thinking of him as both the heir to a tradition of Spanish painting that begins in the late sixteenth century and as an omnipotent father figure for generations of artists on this side of the Atlantic. I say “in theory” because, while both of these ambitious exhibitions offer abundant pleasures, a good deal of instruction, and even some surprises, neither one fully lives up to its promise. Many of the questions they raise about Picasso’s relation to his ancestors and his descendants remain unanswered, while larger issues about the nature of national style and the role of influence itself remain unresolved.

Of course, the fact that “Spanish Painting from El Greco to Picasso: Time, Truth, and History” is an effort of the Guggenheim suggests a need for guarded expectations. So does the show’s subtitle, cribbed from a little allegorical painting by Francisco de Goya (c.1797–1800, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). Symbolizing “time, truth, and history” provided Goya with an excuse