Equally important is Picasso’s reference to “a passing shape,” which emphasizes the speed and instability of inspiration. Not every emotional source arrives fully formed; often it appears briefly, almost disappearing before it can be named. The artist’s gift, then, lies partly in catching these transient impressions before they fade into ordinary forgetfulness.
This sensitivity to the fleeting recalls Charles Baudelaire’s idea in The Painter of Modern Life (1863) that modern art must grasp the ephemeral as well as the eternal. Therefore, Picasso’s artist is not simply contemplative but alert, always ready to rescue meaning from motion. [...]
