Woman in the interior 1936

Picasso made "Woman in the Interior," with what looks like oil on canvas, and it’s all about how painting is thinking, and thinking is seeing. Check out the texture, like the way he's built up the paint around the woman's features, especially her hands and face. There's a real physicality to the surface. It makes you wonder about the process, the wrestling match between the artist and the canvas. The woman is looking at a mirror, or is she reading a book? Her blue clothes look soft, compared to the white lines of the other woman's body next to her. They are both made of the same paint, yet they are different. It reminds me of Philip Guston, who also let his process be so visible, making us part of the conversation. Picasso wasn't trying to hide anything; he was showing us how he saw the world. It's about the ambiguity, the layers of seeing and thinking that make art so compelling.