Homme et enfant 1969

"Homme et enfant" is by Pablo Picasso, and I bet he made it with oil paint, probably pretty fast, alla prima, judging from the brushy strokes. I imagine Picasso, already a legend, thinking about art history, maybe a Byzantine mosaic, or an El Greco painting. See that acid yellow? He’s not just depicting a man and a child, he's playing with how we see, how we remember. The paint is pretty thin, not too much texture, which keeps it immediate, like a sketch but on a big scale. Notice how the figures overlap, kind of clumsy and awkward but it works! That dark line around the child's face, it's so direct, so sure. Picasso is teaching us that painting isn't about perfection, it’s about feeling, about an idea. Painting is like a conversation between artists across time, each one responding to the others. It’s all about how we keep looking, keep questioning, and keep making.