Pablo Picasso once told his friend Claude Roy, “Had I been born Chinese, I would not be a painter, but a writer. I would write my paintings.” He was referring to Chinese calligraphy, the abstract beauty of its flowing lines. “Picasso, Writer,” looks at the artist’s own “calligraphy”—the spare ink and pencil pictograms that are simultaneously picture, symbol, and word. Also in Shanghai, a documentary revealing the working methods behind this facet of Picasso’s genius. —E.C.