Celestina 1904

This drawing of ‘Celestina’ by Pablo Picasso is done with pastel chalks. I can imagine him working on it, one chalk at a time. The artist is not blending, but hatching the color. I wonder if Picasso was thinking about the Old Masters here, like Rembrandt? The woman’s dark cloak has a real gravitas. Look at the way he uses blue to define the folds, giving it weight. The ochre color that he uses for the face is really odd, it reminds me of the way Ensor used color. There’s something about the stare that feels very modern, though. She looks suspicious, as if she knows something we don’t! In art, everybody steals and everybody gives back and I think that art is a conversation, with all the artists building on each other's work. It's an open exchange of ideas, across time.