I presented this project at Strange Loop in September 2018.
In 1945, Picasso created a series of 11 bulls. He started by drawing a realistic bull, and then he made it more and more abstract. The bulls fascinate people because we can see his process and follow along step by step.
Picasso said, “A picture used to be a sum of additions. In my case a picture is a sum of destructions. It would be very interesting to preserve the metamorphoses of a picture. Possibly one might then discover the path followed by the brain in materializing a dream.”
We can explore this, with Python! Using Picasso’s “version control history”, we can create “git diffs” to show changes between bulls, with additions in green and “destructions” in red. We can use Jupyter Notebook to show our work, like Picasso.
The tools we create will help us see what choices Picasso made, and why he made them. It wasn’t arbitrary. He was designing and solving puzzles!
Picasso found the right abstractions to simplify his work. We aspire to do this, too! Making software can help us understand Picasso, and understanding his process can help us make software.