Composition with skull (study) 1907

Pablo Picasso painted "Composition with Skull," maybe as a study, using oils and whatever was on hand. Look at that skull! It’s not a gloomy memento mori, but rendered in bright yellows, like it's been basking in the sun. There’s a patch of raw canvas that makes me wonder if this study was abandoned, or left this way deliberately. I think Picasso might have wanted us to see art as a process. The painting is all about the physicality of paint; he doesn't attempt to conceal the means of its making. The loaded brush strokes around the perimeter of the blue lozenge-shape at the top of the painting, the way the bright yellow outlines the form, are almost crude, as though rapidly applied. For me this connects with work by Philip Guston. Both artists see painting as a way of embracing imperfection, of making something new out of recognizable forms. The longer you look, the more this skull seems to be winking at us, doesn't it?