Soggy emotion, blistered gazes, emotional turpitude. There is a lot in this muss of tangled color and stretched out form. Picasso is sloppy with this composition; he does this, of course, on purpose. The meaning is clear. Its theme is emotional instability, mystery, and vague happiness, occasionally blotched on clandestine spots on the painting.

The center subject is a woman drowning in colour and despair; while the subject of the painting is a convivial evening out, it’s inner and mischievous patterns of scenery and swirling psychosis of uncertainty is cleverly chilling. The zenith is the hat of the woman herself. It is loud and stinging, begging for attention and laud. It explodes above her head, perhaps encasing dead dreams and lost hopes, a sarcophagus of insanity and corruption. The woman’s eyes are devious and swollen with contempt and rave. They rhapsodize, unknown to us, someone possibly regaling the evening’s merriment with her.

Below her neck and what she is wearing is not clear. It is a mixture of strong descent and truncated salvation. Picasso is using color instead of words to demonstrate the woman’s possible predicament in life. She does seem happy at all, and yet she does not fully accept her despair either.

Mazes of color and mystery are in abundance in all the painting; in fact, they splash off one another, one thunderbolt of emotion into another. Picasso leaves us guessing intentionally, especially with the vortex of colors around the woman herself. Is there something else there, a creation of the unseen? Another person, perhaps, is next to her or nearby. The colors of the atmosphere above her head are gloomy and uncertain with a hint of tainted voyeurism. Impossible to interpret, and impossible to go unnoticed. Whichever theme the viewer procures, the stage of mystery and doom fade into the canvas. The real meaning is never revealed, at least not by Picasso. This is, perhaps, the zenith of his intention and the disappointment of our judgement.

 

 

© 2026, Mark Grago. All rights reserved.