Candle, palette, head of red bull 1938

Here's a Picasso painting, it’s called "Candle, palette, head of red bull," and it's like a stage set for some kind of surreal play. The paint is kind of thin, washy, and it feels like Picasso was really thinking on the canvas as he worked. I can imagine him, cigarette dangling from his lips, stepping back, squinting, adding a little dab of color, maybe muttering to himself. The palette there, rendered as an almost-guitar, has the marks of use and gesture, and the head of the bull has that trademark Picasso strangeness, staring out with one yellow eye and one dark eye. There is a geometric plane that the objects are resting on, reminiscent of Synthetic Cubism. You know, I see the influence of his peers here—Braque, Matisse—but also, it points forward to painters like Philip Guston who embraced figuration with a freedom that feels so very personal and so very connected to the history of art. It reminds me that painting is an ongoing conversation, and artists are always building on what came before.