<DIV>For decades after he joined the French Communist Party in 1944, Picasso produced works that connected directly—if in complex and varied ways—to his left-wing political beliefs. <i>Picasso and the Politics of Visual Representation</i> brings together scholars from Europe and the United States to revaluate these later, more politically-driven paintings. Looking at topics such as the legacy of his famed “Guernica,” the Cold War atomic and ideological standoff between the West and the USSR, and the struggle against the Franco fascist regime in Spain, the contributors avail themselves of the most recent scholarship to recast Picasso not simply as a leader of artistic change but an agent of political discourse. </DIV>