Student with newspaper 1913

Picasso made this painting, Student with Newspaper, sometime in his Cubist period with oil paint on canvas. What strikes me first is the colour, it’s so muted, greyed-out even – but somehow that makes the little spots of colour sing out all the more. You can almost feel Picasso puzzling out how to make a painting with next to no colour. Look at the way he's built up the image from planes and facets, like a cut-up collage reassembled. I love the newspaper block at the bottom, you can almost make out the letters, but not quite. The way he teases us with representation, giving us just enough to hook our attention, but never quite resolving into a clear picture. And that central, mask-like form is so odd and compelling. It could be a face, a vase, or just a shape. It reminds me a little of Braque’s work from the same period, all those fractured forms and muted tones. I think the way that art can embrace ambiguity, is always more interesting than anything too neatly resolved.