Portrait of Maya with her doll 1938

Editor: This is Picasso's "Portrait of Maya with her Doll," painted in 1938. The colors are so strange and striking, the blues and greens... What's your interpretation of this work? Curator: Well, consider the materiality. Oil paint allows Picasso to build up layers, constructing a reality through deliberate application of pigment. Notice how the flatness challenges the illusion of three-dimensionality, pushing back against traditional notions of portraiture. The painting isn't merely representational; it's a manufactured object, a product of specific actions with specific materials. Editor: So you're saying the way it’s made is more important than what it depicts? Curator: Not more important, but inextricably linked. The cubist style is, itself, a deconstruction. It is as if the artist, as a maker, took an axe to our notion of representation. Look closely at the canvas texture; where is it thicker, thinner? Consider what grade of paint he used to achieve the flat plane and, especially, the multiple, shifted perspectives? Editor: I see…The doll also feels important in that regard, since dolls themselves are manufactured representations. Curator: Precisely. And consider the socio-political context: it was painted on the eve of WWII. How might anxieties about industrial production and mass consumerism be manifesting here? Editor: Wow, I never would have thought of that. Seeing it as a constructed object within a specific social landscape gives it a whole new dimension. Curator: Art never exists in a vacuum. Appreciating its materiality allows us to grasp its relationship to broader systems of production, consumption and labor.