Olga in a hat with feather 1920

This is Pablo Picasso’s line drawing *Olga in a Hat with Feather*. Drawn in the 1920s, this portrait of Picasso’s then wife Olga Khokhlova presents us with a woman encased in the trappings of wealth and status. Khokhlova was a ballet dancer from a family of the Russian aristocracy. She occupies a place of privilege as Picasso’s muse, yet the emotion we read in her face may reflect a personal alienation, a lack of autonomy over her own image. Picasso’s interest lay in representing Olga within the traditional and often alienating confines of the bourgeois wife. In later portraits, the distortion of her features might be seen to mirror Picasso's shifting feelings towards her, a transition from muse to subject. This work gives us an intimate, and perhaps unsettling, glimpse into a relationship defined by the politics of representation. It speaks to the complex interplay between artist, muse, and the societal expectations of women during this time.