“Woman Ironing”, Pablo Picasso, 1904 My taste for Picasso is extraordinarily limited, but this, this, I love. There’s so much here that is framed, constricted, even: the woman can only exist bent over, the shadows on her neck parallel to the top of the frame—both an echo and an insistence that this is a painting. She cannot straighten her neck and head and still exist as a painted figure. The bottom third presses three-dimensionality out of the canvas; it might as well be a vertical band. Yet the work which the woman performs presses three-dimensionality back into the painting, imbuing life and reality into the painting even as the canvas presses against it.

“Woman Ironing”, Pablo Picasso, 1904

My taste for Picasso is extraordinarily limited, but this, this, I love. There’s so much here that is framed, constricted, even: the woman can only exist bent over, the shadows on her neck parallel to the top of the frame—both an echo and an insistence that this is a painting. She cannot straighten her neck and head and still exist as a painted figure. The bottom third presses three-dimensionality out of the canvas; it might as well be a vertical band. Yet the work which the woman performs presses three-dimensionality back into the painting, imbuing life and reality into the painting even as the canvas presses against it.

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