I don’t know why I write about art occasionally. I’m a confirmed middlebrow–if I don’t care for black velvet matadors or Thomas Kinkade, I don’t get Modernism or Abstract Art at all. But I liked to draw when I was a kid. I guess that gives me an illusory sense of comprehension.

Anyway, Joe Carter at First Thoughts posted a short piece on Picasso today that fascinated me, as it confirmed my prejudices.

What begins in the glow of realist love—or at the very least infatuation—ends in the violent disgust of Cubist distortion. Picasso’s love/hate relationship with the visible world was a visual expression of his love/hate relationship with the particular woman in his life at the time. Cubism, according to the evidence in Picasso’s paintings, is less the abstract juggling of shapes and colors than an index of sexual disgust.

Makes sense to me. See what you think.