Homme au chapeau assis 1972

Picasso made this ‘Man in a Hat’ with oil on canvas, and well, there's a lot to unpack here, isn't there? I think of artmaking as a process, a kind of dance. And Picasso's dance here is wild! Look at how he's laid down the paint, so thick in some places, almost like he's sculpting with it, and then in other spots, these pools of watery color. It's like he's not just painting a man but building him, pulling him from some other dimension. Take a close look at the hands. Those big, almost cartoonish fingers, the way they’re rendered with such playful abandon. To me, this painting is less about what a man in a hat looks like, and more about how it *feels* to make a painting, to create a world out of color and form. You see the energy and the pleasure he took in it, right? Picasso was always playing with perspective and form, kind of like Philip Guston after him. For him, art was this ongoing conversation, a continuous exploration.