Las Meninas (Velazquez) 1957

This is Picasso, riffing on Velazquez's Las Meninas, with oil on canvas. Look at those thick, determined black outlines struggling to contain the colour. It's so visceral, you can almost smell the paint! Imagine Picasso, brush in hand, circling, attacking the canvas, layering colours and shapes, knocking them into a new kind of order. The colour seems almost arbitrary, yet somehow perfect, pushing and pulling. Those blues and greens, that flash of yellow, like an argument, a conversation. I can imagine him stepping back, squinting, then lunging forward to add another line, another mark. He’s not just copying a painting, he’s responding to it. He's wrestling with it. And in that struggle, he's showing us a new way of seeing. Paintings talking to paintings through time! Isn't that so cool?