Picasso's economy

Once in Los Angeles I saw a Picasso painting -- a woman’s head, as placid and monumental as a Greek statue, and up close it was made with a single line and maybe a thimble full of sepia on a white ground. No mistakes, no restarts, not the slightest stray mark anywhere. It was like seeing a tight rope walker poised above a waterfall, the matador kissing the bull on the forehead frozen forever there on a museum wall. Chinese court painters of a thousand years ago would have been knocked out if they’d had a chance to see it. It’s the one piece I remember after all day looking at art.