The whole room is an eerie blue-green, invoking a mysterious or sinister sea-myth. But the man in the painting would never know. He is blind. His thin face is tilted pitiably to the right, letting light fall on his pointed profile. In place of his eye, there is an abysmal bruise. Judging by the man’s emaciated yellow skin, the room could be a prison. The man holds a meager loaf with a hand that could belong to an alien or a corpse. His other hand feels gently for his wine jug. Fluid brushstrokes create a smooth, watery motion on the canvas, emphasizing the Neptunian color palette.
The Blind Man’s Meal (1903) is part of Pablo Picasso’s Blue Period, which lasted from 1901 to 1904. Picasso painted prostitutes, beggars, and drunks in the Blue Period. Their bodies are disproportional, but somehow beautiful at the same time. Picasso depicted a beauty that is not straightforward, not immediate, not explicitly visual.
The Blind Man’s hands and ears are highlighted with lighter yellow and green paint. The emphasis on the hands and ears combined with his placement at the dinner table show us his limited sense of the tangible world. His oversized shirt and beret are almost the same color as the dark walls. But against his sickly skin he is wearing a rich blue scarf. Because he is blind, he does not need decoration or variety of color. Yet, the blue around his neck signals that he still has appreciation of beauty and creativity beyond what is visual. Perhaps the scarf is connected to a memory from his past before he went blind.
The bowl on the table is also decorated. Picasso probably chose this to show that creativity is not merely functional and appreciated by the senses, but also inevitable. Stars and whole planets exist where no one on earth can see them. Our “blindness” or ignorance does nothing to diminish beauty that insists on being alive.
Probably the most recognizable product of the melancholic Blue Period era is The Old Guitarist. The disorienting, angular musician looks like spirit in Dante’s Inferno. Like the Blind Man, the guitarist is also painted looking toward the left, with a sharp chin and nose. But the Old Guitarist looks even more decrepit. If the Blind Man is starving, at least there is hope for salvation. The guitarist is singing about the life that has already left him.
A year after The Blind Man’s Meal, Picasso painted The Frugal Repast (1904). This painting features another blind man and his wife. The set up is almost exactly the same: wine jug, cloth laid out on table, bowl, and bread. This blind man’s head is also turned to the left, his face like a knife. Again, Picasso gives the blind man a scarf around his neck.
What the blind man needs is something that cannot be seen. He is seeking more than physical sustenance as he reaches for the bread and wine. He is grasping for what is truly essential. This is what sets him apart from The Old Guitarist. In the bare darkness, strange and hollowed beauty survives. Like most of the figures in the Blue Period, the Blind Man looks like a wraith. But unlike the guitarist, the Blind Man may belong in Dante’s Purgatorio instead of his hell.