Olé Oil on canvas by Oscar Bernal  66 x 54 inches  2001

Many art scholars are of the opinion that the magnificent 1656 Velázquez painting, Las Meninas (reproduced below), which regally resides in Madrid's Prado Museum, is the greatest painting of all time. In Olé, Oscar Bernal cleverly steals the dwarf, Maribárbola as well as his own transposed pose of one of Velázquez's ladies-in-waiting from Las Meninas, then tosses into the pot a horny looking man done up with the trappings of a frustrated bull soon to be dead meat after being reined in by the dwarf then thoroughly "picadored" by one of the meninas. Perhaps this is also Bernal's satirical mockery of Picasso's many Minotaur figures. He certainly does it with an impressive flourish. But in this case the horned man has a vile air of sleazy decadence that Picasso never risked exposing in his own work. Below also is a tiny reproduction of Picasso's 1935 million dollar etching, Minotauromachy. ___M.M.E.