The Bull (Le taureau) 1946

Picasso made this print of a bull using lithography. Look at how the animal's form has been distilled into a series of lines and planes. I can imagine Picasso circling the paper, charcoal in hand, trying to find the essence of the bull. The feeling of its mass. He's probably thinking about how to reduce the form to its most basic elements, almost like he's reverse engineering it. The black ink has a kind of velvety quality. It makes me think about the muscularity of the animal. Look at the way the lines curve and intersect to suggest depth and volume. It's as if he's trying to capture the idea of a bull, rather than its actual appearance. This kind of reductive process is something that a lot of artists do, stripping away the excess to get to the heart of the matter. Each artist picks up where the last one left off.