Woman Dressing Her Hair

Pablo Picasso, 1940 · Gallery 523 · Floor 5

Look at her. She doesn't fit. Room's too small. Arms too long. Ribs showing up where ribs really shouldn't. Even her face can't quite decide which way it's pointing. And all she's doing is fixing her hair. That's it. Which is kind of strange, because this is supposed to be a quiet little subject. Picasso had painted basically the same thing years earlier. Woman braiding her hair. Calm. Heavy. Almost like a statue. That one's somewhere else in this building. Same gesture. Very different day. Because now it's June 1940. Picasso's in Royan, this little town on the French coast. German troops are moving across France. Paris falls that month. And before the month is out, the Germans are in Royan too. So the quiet little hair-fixing scene comes out like this. Twisted. Cornered. Stuck in a room that's too small for her. And here's another thing. In the drawings leading up to this, Picasso keeps going back and forth between her and a human skull. Woman fixing her hair. Skull. Back to the woman. So death is kind of sitting there beside the whole thing before he even gets to the final painting. And then Picasso keeps it. Seventeen years. Never says why. She's doing the most ordinary thing there is. And somehow it comes out looking like the world outside just got into the room.

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