Bathing 1908

Curator: Here we have Pablo Picasso's "Bathing," painted in 1908 and currently residing in the Hermitage Museum. It's an oil painting showcasing early Cubist tendencies, but even for Picasso, there's a rawness to the materials and execution. What springs to mind for you, visually? Editor: Immediately? Angular almonds. The women almost melt into the watery greens and blues, all rough, choppy brushstrokes. It’s like he’s hacking away at the canvas to free them. There’s something unsettling, almost harsh, about it. Curator: The social context is key here. Picasso was absorbing influences from Cézanne and African sculpture. You can see him dissecting the traditional nude, not for sensuality, but to investigate form, mass and planes. Look at the thick application of paint—how the labor is visible. Editor: Exactly! Like primal carvings. I find it hard to reconcile "Bathing" with some of Picasso's later work. The light! It isn’t soft and flattering. The brushstrokes practically vibrate, don’t they? Making the painting teeter on the edge of unsettling. But perhaps he relished this... almost daring us to be offended. Curator: He was challenging the academic tradition, upending expectations about beauty and representation, to reveal structure, moving away from idealized forms of feminine beauty and toward showing figures built by solid forms, that recall the hard work of physical art making as much as their own selves. The material rendering really drives home the artist's intellectual project, the idea itself as a crafted object. Editor: I find I feel that same intellectual project even though I tend to be less analytical than you; looking closely, I wonder what they are bathing FROM! Or even what's in this water; is that mud? Is there something the figures are desperately cleaning off? Picasso paints that emotional element alongside those constructed bodies you refer to; what one can see can be constructed in one's emotional reaction, too. Curator: It's an interesting proposal...I see your idea of cleansing at play in the deliberate dismantling and material handling of forms he employs. Almost scrubbing away the layers. Editor: Maybe “Bathing” becomes its own sort of ritual – a purging and reshaping. Well, now when I return I'm going to need to find the mud!