Guitar player 1910

With browns, tans, and a little bit of black, Picasso made ‘Guitar Player’ out of oil on canvas. I can almost see Picasso painting this, turning the canvas, adding lines, and then squinting to check his progress. Was he thinking about Cezanne? Maybe Braque? These guys were all looking so hard at the world, trying to figure out how to represent what they saw on a flat surface. It’s like they were wrestling with reality, pushing and pulling at it until it fit onto the canvas. Look at how the shapes pile up, one on top of the other, to create this fractured, almost see-through figure. I love the way the guitar seems to emerge from the person, as though the two are inseparable. It's a radical way of seeing and, like all good painting, this opens up a new way of feeling and thinking.