Woman in a shawl 1902

Picasso painted this 'Woman in a Shawl' sometime around the turn of the century, most likely in oil paint. Look at the chromatic restraint of the picture, the almost monochrome palette. It's blue, blue, and more blue. This wasn't just a mood, it was a whole period for Picasso. The physical texture isn't drawing attention to itself. Paint handling has a more slippery quality, with gentle gradations of tone. What gets me is the face. It emerges from this blue haze, with an almost sculptural quality. You can see that Picasso wasn't really interested in how light falls on something, or how to create a convincing illusion. Instead, his sharp, graphic sensibility flattens the face into a mask. I think of other artists like Modigliani or even El Greco, who stretched and twisted their figures to reach some other kind of truth. Art isn't about copying life. It's about finding new ways to see.