Christopher Knight reviews Picasso and Rivera: Conversations Across Time at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), on view through May 7, 2017.

Knight writes: “In 1915, Pablo Picasso acquired a small Cubist still life painted by his casual friend and acolyte, Diego Rivera… The small painting’s admixture of traditional and avant-garde French, Spanish and Mexican elements is thus remarkable and revealing. ‘Cubist Composition (Still Life With Bottle of Anis and Inkwell)’ adds a subtle but inescapable political dimension to Cubism’s otherwise formal investigations, which focused on principles of representation and abstraction.”