BOY LEADING A HORSE
PABLO PICASSO, 1905-06
So... A naked boy, leading a horse. And look at his hand. He's holding nothing. No rope, no bridle, no halter. There's no reason that horse should follow him. It follows him anyway. This is the young Picasso. Years before the fame, before the money, before the museums. Dirt-poor in Paris, painting on almost nothing. And already, look, he can do this in his sleep. The boy's weight on one leg, the horse's head dipped, both of them moving through a landscape that's barely even there. Pinks and grays. Nothing showing off. The kind of thing that takes most painters a lifetime, and he's tossing it off like a warm-up. Here's why it matters. Keep this face in your head. A real face. Calm, classical, the kind people had been painting beautifully for five hundred years. A human being and an animal, all in proportion, all making sense. Because within a year, he's going to take a face like this and break it. On purpose. Trade it for a mask. Then chop it into planes until you can barely find the person at all. This is the last quiet moment. A boy leading a horse with nothing but his fist, right before the guy who painted him decided that painting things the way they look was beneath him.