This fall we visited Madrid, and of course spent time at Museo Picasso. I believe you understand people and a culture best by experiencing their art, and Picasso is undoubtably one of Spain's greatest artists.
In addition to seeing a timeline of Picasso's maturation and growth as an artist, you see the period where he developed a clear voice or style. Suddenly the paintings look “like Picasso” and not just like other paintings by millions of artists worldwide.
That wasn't just something that magically happened, of course. Most artists practice and develop and study for a lifetime without becoming household names, or even being able to earn a living from their art. It's just that through the magic of repetition, practice, reading, study (and being a nepo baby), Picasso was able to find a voice that changed not just his own art, but the work of his contemporaries and those who followed.
The clearest example of how he got there was exemplified by his variations on the famous painting Las Meninas by Diego Velazquez. Like every artist, Picasso found worthy art and copied it. Unlike other artists, Picasso redid this particular painting 45 times. He actually created a series of 57 related paintings, 45 of which are recognizable variations, though each one has a different emphasis and level of detail. The additional 12 are details of the painting's setting and characters, but might only be recognized by Picasso as being related to the original.
Here is one of the more Picasso-esque variations on Las Meninas. In this one, each character gets their own defined space and light, while background details like doors and windows are relegated to shadows and shapes.
I am guilty of seeing the art of great artists and thinking that the several paintings I see are the total of their work. In fact, a great deal of practice and effort is hidden in the years before the great work was started. Seeing artists like Picasso not only copying a painting but iterating it 44 more times is a lesson in practice and humility, in attention and repetition.
As a musician, it's a reminder of the need to study the greats, and to break down the work to better understand its parts. And in the same way as Picasso, to find my own voice.