Right profile of clown 1905

This small watercolour, Right profile of clown, was made by Pablo Picasso, but we don’t know exactly when. It’s really just a series of stains and smudges. The marks are so fluid, they bleed into each other; the figures seem to emerge out of the gloom, like ghosts or memories. The paper's surface is stained with blues, greys, and blacks, colours traditionally associated with sadness and melancholy. But here they are so watered down they don’t feel heavy at all. The dark shades are offset against the bare, unpainted paper, giving the image a shimmering quality. Look at the way the paint pools and settles on the page, creating accidental textures and patterns. The longer you look, the more the forms begin to dissolve into abstraction. It reminds me of Philip Guston, who similarly explored the circus as a space of human drama and vulnerability. But while Guston's clowns are often grotesque and confrontational, Picasso's figures possess a certain lightness and grace. Like a half-remembered dream, it invites us to contemplate the fragile and ephemeral nature of existence.