A hat with flowers 1940

Picasso made this painting, A Hat With Flowers, with oil on canvas, and it’s like he's juggling what he sees with what he feels. The colors aren't trying to be 'real', more like emotional cues. Look how the face is broken up, with that sharp triangle of white, right down the middle. Then there’s this tear-shaped splotch of blue, echoing a tear on the cheek. It's raw, right? The paint isn’t trying to hide itself; you can see the strokes, the way one color smudges into another. It's like he’s building the face from scratch, each dab and smudge part of figuring out what it means to look, to feel, to be seen. It reminds me of how Guston would take everyday objects and turn them into these heavy, emotional symbols. Picasso’s doing that here, twisting the familiar into something that tugs at you, asking, "What is a face, anyway? What is an emotion?"