She Goat, originally uploaded by meanlouise.

I love goats. I love art. Today, I give you: Pablo Picasso’s She-Goat, which is in the sculpture garden at MoMA. It was 20 degrees out, so we had the garden to ourselves. That was nice.

Picasso’s studio in the town of Vallauris, where he worked beginning in 1948, was next to a yard into which potters threw debris—pieces of metal and shards of ceramics. After deciding to sculpt a goat, Picasso searched the yard for discarded materials that could suggest parts of the animal’s body. He crafted a skeleton with these objects, and filled out the sculpture with plaster. A wicker basket forms the goat’s rib cage; two ceramic jugs were modified to serve as its udders. Flat palm fronds shape the slope of the goat’s spine and the length of its snout, and metal scraps are used as structural units throughout.