The Bull (Le taureau) 1945

Picasso made this print of a bull using etching techniques. It's all about line, with a pared-down palette of blacks, grays, and whites. The line work here is really something. It reminds me that artmaking is a process of building up and stripping away, of finding form through gesture. Look closely, and you'll see how the texture and surface of the bull are created with layers of tiny lines. The cross-hatching gives it a kind of three-dimensionality, like you could reach out and touch its rough hide. My eye is drawn to the head of the bull. There is something about the eye of the bull rendered in a simple, bold outline, that gives the image an emotional charge. It is an abstract emblem of its very bull-ness. It puts me in mind of Matisse, with his simplified forms and emphasis on the beauty of line, and yet Picasso brings a rawness and intensity to the image. And that’s what’s so great about art, isn't it? There's no one right way to see, or to make.