This is Degas' "The Absinthe Drinker." Seniors, you should recognize the guy on the right. If you do, write "I recognize the guy on the right" in your journal followed by his name and a stanza from one of his poems. Note the starry or distant look in the subjects' eyes. No scholarly ballyhoo here; to me the woman looks like a monkey or like Lenny from Of Mice and Men, kind of like she'd been hit in the head with a shovel.

Now here's Shag's modern retro version of the same scene. I don't think you could juxtapose two more diverse styles of painting. Absinthe was not merely a potent alcoholic beverage, it was mind altering and the ruination of many late 19th century artists and writers. It was prohibited in the 1920s.

The next painting is the same scene by the then 21 year old Pablo Picasso. The theme is man's (or in this case woman's) loneliness in a cafe, of isolation and emptiness. The lonely subject sits at a table in a café, the background a dirty-red wall which reinforces the sense of discomfort. Emphasizing the flatness of the canvas, the color of the walls and the bluish tone of the marble table seem to press the space inwards, around the woman, enclosing her in her hopeless loneliness. In her face, we can identify an outcast exentuated by the totally enclosed space of her body and the expressive distortion of the right hand. Everything reinforces the sense of inner tension and cuts the figure off from the world around. On the pretense of a real observation in a cafe Picasso created a generalized and timeless symbol of the tragedy of life. Heavy, huh?

On the back of the painting, concealed beneath heavy overpainting in blue and yellow, is a woman's head, probably a fragment of a work which did not satisfy the artist.

The Decadents would like my analysis, except that I included what I know about Picasso and the era.

For you Juniors who have read this far, this is a preview of what you will do next year. For you seniors, you'll be disappointed that there is no assignment. Sorry.