THE ARCHITECT'S TABLE
PABLO PICASSO, 1912
Okay. Good luck finding the table. Which is funny, because the painting's called The Architect's Table. There's a desk in here somewhere. A drafting tool, a cup, a folded newspaper. But Picasso's Cubism has gone so deep by now that the actual objects have dissolved into a soft brown fog of edges and angles. You keep reaching for something solid and come back with a handful of smoke. So everyone files this under cold. A math problem in brown. The least human painting in the room. It's the opposite. Look closer. There's lettering in here. Ma Jolie. My pretty one. It's a pet name. Picasso's got a new love, a woman called Eva, and he's tucked her nickname into the painting like a note passed in class. Fernande, the one he dragged up the mountain a few years back, is on her way out. He's already hiding the next one in plain sight. And down at the bottom, a little painted card. Miss Gertrude Stein. She came by the studio one day, he wasn't home, so she left her calling card, as a joke. He painted it straight into the picture. Then she bought the painting. Her first Picasso, all her own. So the coldest-looking puzzle in the building is actually the warmest thing in it. It's a diary. Who he was falling for, who dropped by, who he wanted in the room. All buried in a brown fog where you'd never think to look. That's the secret of high Cubism. It looks like it's about nothing. It's packed with his whole life.