Composition with skull (study) 1907

Picasso’s ‘Composition with Skull (Study)’ is a riot of feeling, laid down with what looks like a housepainter’s brush. Thick paint, fast moves – you can see him thinking and working at the same time. I wonder what it was like to be Picasso in the studio, wrestling with those colours. Red, blue, yellow, fighting for space on the canvas. The skull is almost laughing, like it knows something we don’t. It’s like a still life that’s about to explode. What did Picasso learn while making it? That one long black line on the left – it’s so casual, but it holds the whole thing together. It reminds me of Manet, or maybe even Goya. Artists are always talking to each other like that, across time. Painting is a conversation, a way of thinking out loud. It's never really finished, is it?