WELLINGTON: The paintings were proclaimed to be works by Pablo Picasso and they were of such great value that when an art museum in Australia decided to exhibit them in a women-only show, it led to a lawsuit on gender discrimination. This time the art pieces made headlines after being re-hung in a ladies’ restroom by the gallery to avoid legal consequences barring men from viewing them.
However, this week it was revealed that the said centrepiece artworks were not those done by Picasso or any other well-known artists who had been named as their authors when the curator Kaechele admitted she had painted them herself during an interview.
This is because through questions addressed to her by both reporter and Picasso administration in France concerning their authenticity, she came out as creator of the masterpieces on Wednesday while writing on blog post of Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA).
She still said they hadn’t known about where they came from until just recently even though she mistakenly installed one of her phony artworks upturned for more than three years.
On Wednesday, Kirsha Kaechele wrote: “I thought that someone would come into the Ladies Lounge, see that this painting is upside down – either a scholar about Picasso or simply his fan or anybody googling; then he will post some damning evidence about me on social media.” This never happened though.
In 2020, Kaechele established a section specifically for women at MONA called Women Only Zone so that they can enjoy female companionship and as a statement against women’s exclusion from male dominated spaces since time immemorial.
These rooms called Ladies Lounge offered high tea accompanied with massages served by gentlemen butlers. It was opened for every woman regardless who she identified herself as. They also displayed fake paintings, antiquities and jewelries whose titles cards were ludicrous and silly showing clearly it was “quite obviously new and in some cases plastic.”
To this end, Kaechele explained that the Louvre had to exhibit “the most important artworks in the world” so as to make men feel completely shut out.
And it did. In March, MONA received an order from the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to stop excluding men from entering the Ladies Lounge after a complaint by a male patron who was denied access during his visit to the gallery in 2023.
The artwork itself includes visitors’ participation in the process of being refused or granted admission,” said Deputy President Richard Grueber when he wrote a decision which found that the exhibition was discriminatory.
Grueber had decided that the man was inconvenienced in some way, partly because there were very valuable pieces of art in the Ladies Lounge. Kaechele had described them as “a carefully selected collection of paintings done by leading artists from all over the world with two such paintings showing Picasso’s genius”.
The tribunal recommended MONA to stop excluding males. Grueber’s decision also criticized a group of women, who accompanied Kaechele while wearing suits and crossed their legs silently at once during the entire proceeding. One woman “read feminist books pointedly,” he said, describing how they left the tribunal “behind Ms. Kaechele marching slowly to a song by Robert Palmer.”
According to Grueber, this gesture is “at best unsuitable, discourteous and disrespectful and at worst contumelious and contemptuous.”
Rather than permitting men into her work, Kaelhe established a working toilet inside it which turned it into a ladies’ room so she could take advantage of what she perceived as a legal loophole allowing her to continue denying men entry
International news organizations reported on this event in May without apparently considering that an art gallery would hang pictures by Picasso on its restroom walls. However, the Guardian reported Wednesday that it had asked Kaechele about the authenticity of the work, prompting her confession.
It was not immediately possible for The Associated Press to get more details from MONA after Gates-Mathews told them that they will provide no extra information regarding what Sara said about having seen a letter from Picasso Administration addressed to Kirsha. When approached for comment by AP last week on whether or not statements contained within her blog post titled “Art is Not Truth: Pablo Picasso” accurately reflected her views expressed therein about him; Sara Gates-Mathews replied saying it was indeed Kirsha’s admission truthfully.
The Picasso Administration has never responded instantly upon request for comments.
“I’m flattered that people believed my great-grandmother summered with Picasso at her Swiss chateau where he and my grandmother were lovers when she threw a plate at him for indiscretions (of a kind) that bounced off his head and resulted in the crack you see inching through the gold ceramic plate in the Ladies Lounge,” Kaechele wrote this week, referring to the title card on one painting.
“The real plate would have killed him – it was made of solid gold. Well, it would have dented his forehead because the real plate is actually a coin.”
