Head of a Woman (Fernande) 1909

Here's Picasso, transforming Fernande Olivier's head into a series of planes and angles, rendered in browns and grays. I can imagine him working on this piece. He’s got a brush full of paint, and he's thinking about Cezanne, maybe? Or maybe he’s just pissed off with Fernande that day, who knows? Look at those hatched lines forming shadows, defining the contours of her face. They speak to a process of analysis, breaking down form into its essential components. It's all angles and edges, right? But there's also a softness in the way he models the light across her cheek. It's like he's trying to capture both the external appearance and the underlying structure, a push-pull between representation and abstraction. And that’s what painting is all about. Painters are always riffing off each other’s ideas. We’re borrowing, stealing, and transforming the stuff that came before us. It’s a conversation across time, always changing, never ending.