A bullfight 1934

Picasso made this painting of a bullfight, with oil on canvas, and I can only imagine what he was thinking... The painting's all churned up, like one of his Cubist shakedowns, but now the subject is horses and bulls, all scrambled together in a ring. What I love is the feeling of speed and panic he's managed to capture. See how the strokes of color are all jumbled together, like the scene is moving too fast to focus on any one thing? The yellows, blues and greens feel so alive, almost as if they're leaping off the canvas. Those heavy marks feel impulsive, like he needed to release his thoughts in a hurry, and this reminds me of the action painters like de Kooning, who also put their whole bodies into painting, with a sense of freedom. For Picasso, as for so many artists, painting was clearly this embodied thing, where thinking and feeling become totally enmeshed.