Man and woman in café 1903

Pablo Picasso made this oil on canvas, Man and woman in café, and it is steeped in blues, a real signature of that period. The blues here aren’t just sad, they’re also kind of electric, right? Look at how he’s scrubbed the paint on, especially in the woman's face. You can see the canvas peeking through. That thin paint makes her feel vulnerable, exposed. Then, bam! there’s this thick, almost sculptural paint in the carafe on the table. It’s like he's saying, "Feel the weight of things, the emotional density!" It reminds me a bit of some work by Paula Modersohn-Becker, that intensity, the way she dug into the surface of the canvas. Both artists grapple with the push and pull between surface and depth, between what's seen and what's felt. In the end, it is about the conversation between these elements, rather than landing on one fixed meaning, it’s this dynamic that keeps us hooked.