Construction with Guitar Player by Pablo Picasso

Thinking Through Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)’s “The Origin of the Work of Art”

Picasso’s Construction with Guitar Player is neither sculpture nor painting—it is the breakdown of medium itself, and thus a radical presencing of world-fracture. Heidegger would not ask what it depicts. He would ask: what kind of world is opened when perspective collapses and objects cease to be unified?

Here, guitar, figure, void, and space disassemble. There is no ground, no stable form. And yet, Being shows itself—as splintered visibility. The earth—cut cardboard, wood, collage—no longer mimics. It asserts thinghood. The world—urban life, sound, dislocation—emerges in pieces. This is truth no longer whole, but truth as scattered relation.

Heidegger might say: in breaking apart objects, Picasso does not destroy the world. He opens a new one, where Being is visible only in partial facets, and dwelling becomes the act of rearrangement.