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Show would figure in a later piece and two sets of sketches. What is most surprising of Picasso's earlier attempts is the way he incorporated the old paintings into the new ones. The curve of a bullring becomes a shoulder, the line of a horses hoof, a leg. Each new painting is built upon the loss of the painting before, perhaps causing Picasso to claim that "What comes out in the end is the result of discarded finds." He could have simply let the forms of his earlier work go, could have let them slip away, and started with a blank canvass, but he seems to have valued, even early on, the shape of loss. He seems to have understood that growth depends on, is shaped on and by, all that has been left behind. Late in his career, Picasso was said to have remarked that painting is the sum of destructions. Count the waves, close your eyes, ignore the fingernail polish, hammer your pet pig's scull, move, then move again, and again, and again, hold these boards straight, no these boards, no these board, and then collect the body parts from the corn field, choose your wife, your daughter, the Navy, choose your husband, hide the fact that you see double, play the Ace; the nurse is burning your newborn, your baby, your son, your brother is hanging by a thread, your father is raping your sister, and the admiral is passing you over, with little more than a signature, the admiral is passing you over; take this parking place, no this one, and then resign yourself to farming for the rest of your life, run your body into the ground, don't eat that apple, that cheese, that chocolate shake, hit the fish hard, on its head, shattering its eyeball, here is the red button, push it, here is the boy who laughed at you, stab him, here is the father who yelled at you because his father 193 |