Bonjour Picasso, from the portfolio Homage to Picasso

From a 1973 portfolio of sixty-nine prints by many of the foremost artists of the mid 20th century, Arakawa’s Bonjour Picasso seems at first to be a cheerful note to the artist in brightly colored handwriting, filled with bland niceties. “Dear Picasso, Hello. How are you? How is the family? How is the weather?” However, some of the lines are smudged and unreadable, with hints of a darker message seen in the line “nightmare of history.” The text concludes with a jaunty, “Kiss me quick and write me soon.” The background image—an upside-down detail of Gustave Courbet’s 1855 work titled The Painter’s Studio: A Real Allegory Summing Up Seven Years of My Life as an Artist—may allude to Picasso’s very public role as an artist.

Arakawa had an artistic career as what he termed an “eternal outsider.” He immigrated to New York from Japan in 1961, reportedly with only $14 in his pocket and the phone number of conceptual artist Marcel Duchamp, who became a patron and mentor. Arakawa and his wife, Madeline Gins, collaborated on a large body of paintings, prints, poetry, installations, and architecture.