"If someone want to copy Las Meninas, entirely in good faith, for example, upon reaching a certain point and if that one was me, I would say..what if you put them a little more to the right or left? I'll try to do it my way, forgetting about Velazquez. The test would surely bring me to modify or change the light because of having changed the position of a character. So, little by little, that would be a detestable Meninas for a traditional painter, but would be my Meninas. ” (Picasso 1950)
Picasso's paintings aren't copies, they are jazz riffs on the classical melody of the original. Photographer Gary Winogrand is quoted as saying ""I have a burning desire to see what things look like photographed by me". Picasso Painted to see what Las Meninas looked like painted by himself. He approached painting as an experiment- how does this look if…what happens when…
How do we measure progress in photography? Or success? Is it when we are capable of making an image that appears as close to the one in our heads as possible? There is an argument there about technical mastery but it's not enough. If you were to choose one "iconic" Picasso to represent the Las Meninas series it would be this one. It’s essentially a cubist version of the original and the one most people think of when you mention the series. But that wasn't the final image in Picasso's Las Meninas series. It was the first image. After that Meninas he painted 57 more. What if there is more and you just have to keep looking?
Photographers come up with all sorts of ways to measure "progress". What is our "keeper rate"? How much post-processing do our images need? Do we need to crop or did we "crop in camera". I've seen photographers painstakingly calculate the percentage of "keeper" images every time they go out photographing. Keeper rates are a metric designed for playing safe- if you do what you know and are comfortable with then your keeper rate will improve. But that is not the same as getting better.
What is better? Which Las Meninas is "better"? The Valesquez? One of the Picassos?What if "better" was never the point. Picasso himself donated all 58 of his Las Meninas painting to the museum. If the goal was better, he would have sent only his "best". Picasso's Las Meninas were never about better, he was never trying to improve on the Valasquez, he was trying to make it his own.
