The death of Casagemas 1901

Picasso painted 'The Death of Casagemas' in the early 1900s, using oils on what looks like a pretty coarse canvas. It's all about the brushstrokes, right? Look how thick and expressive they are. The yellow of his face is almost sickly, contrasted with the cool blues of the pillow, which gives him a strange look, a kind of ghostly presence. The paint has so much texture, you can almost feel the weight of it, or imagine it, like that one stroke of bright blue right under the chin. You can see the layers and the way that Picasso wasn't trying to hide his process. It reminds me a bit of Van Gogh, in the way he used the paint to convey emotion. Maybe Picasso was working through some heavy feelings here, trying to capture the weight and the finality of loss through these heavy, visible marks. Ultimately though, a painting like this is never really "finished," is it? It just keeps evolving in our minds.