Variation on Delacroix's "Women of Algiers": IV 1955

This etching by Picasso, based on Delacroix's painting "Women of Algiers," looks as though it came into being through a process of reduction and intensification, distilling Delacroix's orientalist fantasy into its barest, most essential lines. I can almost feel Picasso's hand as he scratched these figures onto the plate, rethinking the composition, turning up the volume on certain lines, and muting others almost to the point of erasure. I imagine him thinking about what Delacroix was thinking, the history of painting, and the way that we look at bodies. That single, confident contour defining the back of the reclining figure – it’s so simple and yet it holds so much weight, both literally and figuratively. It's like he's challenging the very idea of form and representation. Ultimately, it shows how the artist uses form to build upon the work of other artists. Each one showing the other something new.