Pablo Picasso: The Lovers A MONA Moment By Ron Roth Director Museum of Nebraska Art

It is a sketch by Picasso, a mixed media of ink, watercolor and charcoal on paper. Called The Lovers, a man and women--enclosed in each other's embrace--float peacefully through space. Picasso's biographers have identified the couple as Picasso and his first great love, Fernande Olivier.

It is an image of compelling, serene power. We do not see the man's face. It is nestled peacefully away from us, cradled in the woman's left shoulder. The couple is naked, their legs entwined sensually. But this work is not about a sexual encounter. You can tell this simply by looking at their hands, their long, willowy, expressive fingers.

For instance, the long fingers of the man's right hand lovingly, delicately cradle the top of her head. To be sure, they press her head with the urgency of passion as he holds her face close to his. But at the same time, it is an embrace of affection, Ms hand capped on her head, so like the way we hold an infant's head to protect it.

This delicacy of touch and the feeling of tenderness it evokes is spread exquisitely through each of the lovers' arms, hands and fingers. Look, for instance, at her left arm which falls limply down his back, and her small and index fingers pursed delicately together and pressing against his back.

Clearly, sexual surrender is implied, but not at the expense of the affection, the tenderness inherent in their embrace in those delicate, expressive fingers. And look at her right hand holding his upper left arm. She is clearly not using her hand to pull him closer. Her hand rests on his, arm holding him just where he is, holding him and them in that inexpressible moment of need.

And what does that moment encompass? We need look no further than her serene, radiant face. It is the radiance of passion, affection, of tenderness, of serenity, the peaceful, security of their fleeting oneness with another. If the question ever arises for you what makes Picasso so great, confidently refer, the doubter to the face of this woman. Her closed eves, her lightly pursed lips are simply a few curved lines in black, arrayed in a transcendent harmony which moves and compels us.

Picasso suspends us with these lovers in the momentary spell of physical and spiritual unity, weightless and floating on the page, far removed from the vagaries and disappointments of every day life.

It is like a lullaby really. Similar in feeling to the poem of the same name by W. H. Auden, with that opening stanza:

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.