Portrait of Ambroise Vollard 1910

This is a portrait of Ambroise Vollard by Pablo Picasso, sitting in Moscow's Pushkin Museum. Look at how Picasso painted it: he’s really broken down the image into these geometric shapes. See how he’s used these browns and grays? You can almost feel the artist piecing him together, bit by bit. I can imagine Picasso standing back, squinting, then stepping forward to place just one more angular form to capture Vollard's likeness. You know, painting isn't just about what you see, it's about how you feel and what you think while you're looking. The way he repeats the lines and facets reminds me of Cézanne, while anticipating his own later cubist works. What's cool is how artists are always in conversation, aren't they? They keep bouncing ideas off each other, even across time. And that's what keeps the whole thing moving, changing, becoming.