Nude with Her Knee Raised (Femme nue à la jambe pliée) 1931

This is "Nude with Her Knee Raised" by Pablo Picasso, it’s an etching, so made with ink on a metal plate. You can see how the lines just keep going, building up the form. It’s like he’s thinking out loud with the marks. The thing that grabs me is how he's made this woman’s body out of a web of lines, they’re delicate but so insistent, like he's trying to trap her on the page, or maybe release her. Look at how the cross-hatching gets denser around her chest and thighs, giving weight and volume. Then, there's this grid behind her, so orderly compared to the curves of the body, this contrast really amps up the tension in the image. You know, Picasso was always looking at other artists, like Ingres, or even going back to the old masters. He takes what they were doing, but then totally flips it, he's like, yeah, I see you, but I'm going to do my own thing. And that’s what art is all about, right?