Woman in the interior 1936

Here is Picasso's painting of a woman in an interior, made with layered brushstrokes and a muted colour palette. You can almost see the painting come into being, shifting and emerging through trial, error, and intuition. Looking at this, I think about what it must have been like for Picasso to create. What was he thinking? He’s juggling different perspectives, dimensions, and viewpoints all at once, trying to show us an image of a whole human. Look at the window, and then the woman's frame. Is she painting? Or looking at a painting? Perhaps Picasso is pointing to the reflexive nature of artmaking. Artists are always talking to each other across time, inspiring one another’s creativity. Painting allows for ambiguity, so we can have multiple readings, rather than a single definitive one.