The absinthe drinker 1901

Picasso painted The Absinthe Drinker with oils on canvas, using a moody palette that feels both intimate and distant. You can see how he worked through it, adjusting the colours and the brushstrokes, because there's a real process there on the canvas. The brushwork is so expressive! It's thick and generous in some places, particularly in the red scarf, and thinner and more washy in others, like around the face. I keep coming back to her hand hovering over the glass, the fingers are kind of elongated and strange, but they have this delicate tension. It’s like Picasso is saying something about alienation, but also about the strange beauty you can find in those in-between moments. It's funny, looking at this now, I think of Paula Modersohn-Becker. She had this incredible raw energy in her portraits. Maybe Picasso was looking at her stuff, maybe not, but it's like they’re both part of this conversation about how we see each other, and how we turn those observations into art. It’s this back and forth, an ongoing discussion, that makes art so alive.