Bull (plate I) 1945

Curator: Here we have Picasso's "Bull (plate I)" from 1945, a charcoal drawing currently residing at the Museum of Modern Art. What are your first impressions? Editor: Stark. It feels raw, almost elemental. Just a bull rendered with aggressive strokes—charcoal digging into paper, I imagine. It’s incredibly direct in its reduction, though. Curator: Absolutely, it's about reduction! The image progressively simplifies the animal's form from eleven states of lithographs into this drawing. We move from representation to the pure essence of "bull." I think about its cultural connotations during a time when Spanish identity felt complex. Editor: Right. Materials here speak volumes. Why charcoal? Because it is immediate and easily sourced, a democratized form, or because the final work looks like stone etching. Also, notice the layering. How many passes to get that heft of shadow, that particular muscular bulk and sense of mass? How does this immediacy clash with our romantic ideas about his technique? Curator: Precisely! Picasso embraces both control and chance. It feels so impulsive but, behind it, you know is an exhaustive process. Look closely, and you might also find a sensitive bull—a being more melancholic than imposing! That heavy body has a slight stoop. He's been through things! Editor: You've pinpointed something essential, that stoop—but it still misses the means, like the surface itself. We are assuming an expensive archival paper, correct? What impact does it create versus newsprint? Consider how paper scarcity due to the war affected even established artists' access to standard supplies? Did the austerity of the period have bearing on that final reduction? Curator: An intriguing perspective, but it is ultimately the emotion. A post-war bull could never be just the materials used! What if this image becomes a poignant metaphor about endurance during times of collective uncertainty, regardless of the paper quality or production conditions? Editor: Perhaps, and while metaphor surely emerges, I like focusing on the conditions from which he made and sourced the work! Thinking this way pulls Picasso closer. Curator: In the end, there is so much possibility that we must experience it directly and deeply! Editor: I like to experience, feel the paper. That is what lasts in the end, or not!