No one understood better than Picasso that slang was the inevitable language of modern art. “Every act of creation is first an act of destruction,” he said.

To invent the fractured planes and disrupted viewpoints of cubism, he smashed rules of representation and perspective enshrined since the Renaissance. Such an act of iconoclasm determined the raw, broken visual vocabulary of the 20th century.

It also located Picasso in the past, as he endlessly competed against and cannibalised the art of unity and harmony to which cubism had dealt a death blow.

We should listen and apply his wisdom in order to understand and navigate today´s turbulent times.