Dancer 1954

Picasso made this dancer, we don’t know exactly when, with what looks like coloured wax crayon on paper. The thing about wax crayon, is that it is so immediate. You can just *feel* the directness of the process in the marks, a real sense of the hand, and the body. Look how he uses these quite simple marks to imply movement. There’s the blue line that makes the dress, or the yellow which comes down to a point like a toe, like she’s balancing! Then there are these tiny, almost scribbled marks which fill in the lacy dress and headdress. There’s a kind of energy and joy in this dancer, the kind of energy you might find later in a Twombly drawing. The way he uses the bare minimum to suggest a whole world of expression is classic Picasso. It shows us how drawing is such a unique form of expression. It is not really about accuracy, but about poetry.