"What is a face, really? Its own photo? Its make-up? Or is it a face as painted by such or such painter? That which is in front? Inside? Behind? And the rest? Doesn't everyone look at himself in his own particular way? Deformations simply do not exist"
About this Quote
Picasso takes the most overfamiliar object in human life - the face - and yanks it out of the passport-photo mindset. The questions come fast, almost heckling: is a face its own photo, its make-up, a painter's version, the surface "in front", the psyche "inside", the history "behind"? The rapid-fire framing matters. It mimics cubism's refusal to grant any single angle the right to be called reality. By the time he lands on "And the rest?" he's already expanded the face into a kind of moving target: image, performance, memory, and interpretation piled on top of each other.
The punch line, "Deformations simply do not exist", is classic Picasso provocation. It's not a denial of difference; it's an assault on the idea that there's a neutral, correct baseline from which art (or people) can be judged as distorted. If everyone looks at himself "in his own particular way", then every face is already a self-portrait - edited by desire, insecurity, vanity, and mood. The "deformed" face is just the face seen from an angle polite society doesn't authorize.
Context sharpens the edge. Picasso is speaking from a century that made faces reproducible at scale: photography, posters, cinema, mass celebrity. Those technologies promised a definitive likeness while quietly standardizing what counts as presentable. His line reads like a counter-spell: representation isn't accuracy; it's power. Who gets to decide what looks "right" is the real subject. In that sense, the quote isn't only about painting; it's about refusing the tyranny of a single view.
The punch line, "Deformations simply do not exist", is classic Picasso provocation. It's not a denial of difference; it's an assault on the idea that there's a neutral, correct baseline from which art (or people) can be judged as distorted. If everyone looks at himself "in his own particular way", then every face is already a self-portrait - edited by desire, insecurity, vanity, and mood. The "deformed" face is just the face seen from an angle polite society doesn't authorize.
Context sharpens the edge. Picasso is speaking from a century that made faces reproducible at scale: photography, posters, cinema, mass celebrity. Those technologies promised a definitive likeness while quietly standardizing what counts as presentable. His line reads like a counter-spell: representation isn't accuracy; it's power. Who gets to decide what looks "right" is the real subject. In that sense, the quote isn't only about painting; it's about refusing the tyranny of a single view.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
|---|
More Quotes by Pablo
Add to List
