An exhibition at Paris’s Musée du Luxembourg traces the relationship between the American writer and the Spanish painter and their influences on 20^th-century art and marks the 50th anniversary of Picasso's death in a place generally devoted to the broadly appealing celebration of the Renaissance and Impressionism; it brings together contemporary artists who operate in conceptual art, and whose work is seen by others as a means of criticising North American society and the stereotypes and inequalities to which women and African Americans are subjected.

Because of its construction in two distinct parts, whose coherence is ensured solely by the figure of writer and collector Gertrude Stein (1874-1946). It's even more appealing; while Picasso is present, it's not for the umpteenth conventional homage but to show how much he introduced a decisive revolution to the arts in the 20^th century. The subtitle, "The Invention of Language," rather elliptically suggests this.