"Head of a Man" The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection, 1967
The guitar, held more closely to the body than almost any other instrument, helps collapse the distinction between figures and objects—a classic cubist goal. It also always invokes the person playing it, so that every picture titled Guitar could as easily be titled The Guitar Player—a figure who always also stands for the Spanish artist himself. (Nearly all Picasso's titles were made up long after the fact, by others, so they say almost nothing about a work's true subject.)











