The shell Saint Jacques (Our future is in the air) 1912

Picasso made this painting, 'The shell Saint Jacques (Our future is in the air)', with oil on canvas, and he really worked it! It's not a quick sketch, but a building-up, a layering of browns, greys, and blacks, punctuated by flashes of blue, red, and white. You can almost see him there, wrestling with form and space, trying to cram all these different perspectives into one oval. I wonder, did he struggle with it? Did he have moments of doubt, scraping back the paint, starting again? Look how the surfaces tilt and shift, creating a fractured sense of reality. The shell itself is broken into planes, echoing Cezanne, while the lettering adds a graphic punch, like Braque. It’s as if Picasso’s saying, “I can do it all!” And maybe he can. Painting is a conversation and a language across generations of artists. Ultimately, painting is not about answers, but about questions. It's a way of seeing, thinking, and feeling, all rolled into one messy, beautiful experience.