Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Prompt: Explain the Influences of this artwork, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

Picasso created hundreds of sketches and studies in preparation for the final work. He long acknowledged the importance of Spanish art and Iberian sculpture as influences on the painting. The work is believed by critics to be influenced by African tribal masks and the art of Oceania, although Picasso denied the connection; many art historians remain skeptical about his denials. Picasso spent an October 1906 evening closely studying a Teke figure from Congo then owned by Matisse. It was later that night that Picasso's first studies for what would become Les Demoiselles d’Avignon were created. Several experts maintain that, at the very least, Picasso visited the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro (known later as the Musée de l'Homme) in the spring of 1907 where he saw and sought inspiration from African and other arts shortly before completing Les Demoiselles. He had come to this museum originally to study plaster casts of medieval sculptures, then also considered examples of "primitive" art.

Pablo Picasso, ''Nu aux bras levés (Nude),'' 1907

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Femme nue'', oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano

An illustration from Jouffret's ''Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions''. The book, which influenced Picasso, was given to him by Princet.

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure upper right).jpg

Category:Paintings in the Museum of Modern Art (New York City)

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Nu à la serviette'', oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery), oil on canvas, 61.4 x 47.6 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.jpg

File:Le Grand Baigneur, par Paul Cézanne, Yorck.jpg

File:Jacques Doucet's hôtel particulier, 33 rue Saint-James, Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1929 photograph Pierre Legrain.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Femme nue, oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano.jpg

File:Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika. Table II..jpg

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the lower right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure lower right).jpg

The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope

Pablo Picasso, ''Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery)'', 1907, oil on canvas, 61.4 × 47.6 cm, The [[Museum of Modern Art

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the upper right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu à la serviette, oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu aux bras levés (Nude).jpg

Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 book ''Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika''


Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Prompt: How does Les Demoiselles d'Avignon explain its Influences?

Picasso created hundreds of sketches and studies in preparation for the final work. He long acknowledged the importance of Spanish art and Iberian sculpture as influences on the painting. The work is believed by critics to be influenced by African tribal masks and the art of Oceania, although Picasso denied the connection; many art historians remain skeptical about his denials. Picasso spent an October 1906 evening closely studying a Teke figure from Congo then owned by Matisse. It was later that night that Picasso's first studies for what would become Les Demoiselles d’Avignon were created. Several experts maintain that, at the very least, Picasso visited the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro (known later as the Musée de l'Homme) in the spring of 1907 where he saw and sought inspiration from African and other arts shortly before completing Les Demoiselles. He had come to this museum originally to study plaster casts of medieval sculptures, then also considered examples of "primitive" art.

Pablo Picasso, ''Nu aux bras levés (Nude),'' 1907

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Femme nue'', oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano

An illustration from Jouffret's ''Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions''. The book, which influenced Picasso, was given to him by Princet.

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure upper right).jpg

Category:Paintings in the Museum of Modern Art (New York City)

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Nu à la serviette'', oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery), oil on canvas, 61.4 x 47.6 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.jpg

File:Le Grand Baigneur, par Paul Cézanne, Yorck.jpg

File:Jacques Doucet's hôtel particulier, 33 rue Saint-James, Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1929 photograph Pierre Legrain.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Femme nue, oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano.jpg

File:Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika. Table II..jpg

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the lower right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure lower right).jpg

The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope

Pablo Picasso, ''Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery)'', 1907, oil on canvas, 61.4 × 47.6 cm, The [[Museum of Modern Art

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the upper right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu à la serviette, oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu aux bras levés (Nude).jpg

Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 book ''Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika''


Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Prompt: In Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, how is the Influences discussed?

Picasso created hundreds of sketches and studies in preparation for the final work. He long acknowledged the importance of Spanish art and Iberian sculpture as influences on the painting. The work is believed by critics to be influenced by African tribal masks and the art of Oceania, although Picasso denied the connection; many art historians remain skeptical about his denials. Picasso spent an October 1906 evening closely studying a Teke figure from Congo then owned by Matisse. It was later that night that Picasso's first studies for what would become Les Demoiselles d’Avignon were created. Several experts maintain that, at the very least, Picasso visited the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro (known later as the Musée de l'Homme) in the spring of 1907 where he saw and sought inspiration from African and other arts shortly before completing Les Demoiselles. He had come to this museum originally to study plaster casts of medieval sculptures, then also considered examples of "primitive" art.

Pablo Picasso, ''Nu aux bras levés (Nude),'' 1907

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Femme nue'', oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano

An illustration from Jouffret's ''Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions''. The book, which influenced Picasso, was given to him by Princet.

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure upper right).jpg

Category:Paintings in the Museum of Modern Art (New York City)

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Nu à la serviette'', oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery), oil on canvas, 61.4 x 47.6 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.jpg

File:Le Grand Baigneur, par Paul Cézanne, Yorck.jpg

File:Jacques Doucet's hôtel particulier, 33 rue Saint-James, Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1929 photograph Pierre Legrain.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Femme nue, oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano.jpg

File:Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika. Table II..jpg

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the lower right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure lower right).jpg

The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope

Pablo Picasso, ''Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery)'', 1907, oil on canvas, 61.4 × 47.6 cm, The [[Museum of Modern Art

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the upper right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu à la serviette, oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu aux bras levés (Nude).jpg

Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 book ''Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika''


Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Prompt: In the context of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, explain the El Greco and the Influences.

In 1907, when Picasso began work on Les Demoiselles, one of the old master painters he greatly admired was El Greco (1541–1614), who at the time was largely obscure and under-appreciated. Picasso's friend Ignacio Zuloaga (1870–1945) acquired El Greco's masterpiece, the Opening of the Fifth Seal, in 1897 for 1000 pesetas. The relation between Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and the Opening of the Fifth Seal was pinpointed in the early 1980s, when the stylistic similarities and the relationship between the motifs and visually identifying qualities of both works were analyzed.El Greco's painting, which Picasso studied repeatedly in Zuloaga's house, inspired not only the size, format, and composition of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, but also its apocalyptic power. Later, speaking of the work to Dor de la Souchère in Antibes, Picasso said: "In any case, only the execution counts. From this point of view, it is correct to say that Cubism has a Spanish origin and that I invented Cubism. We must look for the Spanish influence in Cézanne. Things themselves necessitate it, the influence of El Greco, a Venetian painter, on him. But his structure is Cubist."The relationship of the painting to other group portraits in the Western tradition, such as Diana and Callisto by Titian (1488–1576), and the same subject by Rubens (1577–1640), in the Prado, has also been discussed.

Pablo Picasso, ''Nu aux bras levés (Nude),'' 1907

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Femme nue'', oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano

An illustration from Jouffret's ''Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions''. The book, which influenced Picasso, was given to him by Princet.

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure upper right).jpg

Category:Paintings in the Museum of Modern Art (New York City)

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Nu à la serviette'', oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery), oil on canvas, 61.4 x 47.6 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.jpg

File:Le Grand Baigneur, par Paul Cézanne, Yorck.jpg

File:Jacques Doucet's hôtel particulier, 33 rue Saint-James, Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1929 photograph Pierre Legrain.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Femme nue, oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano.jpg

File:Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika. Table II..jpg

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the lower right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure lower right).jpg

The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope

Pablo Picasso, ''Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery)'', 1907, oil on canvas, 61.4 × 47.6 cm, The [[Museum of Modern Art

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the upper right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu à la serviette, oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu aux bras levés (Nude).jpg

Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 book ''Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika''


Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Prompt: Explain the El Greco about the Influences of this artwork, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

In 1907, when Picasso began work on Les Demoiselles, one of the old master painters he greatly admired was El Greco (1541–1614), who at the time was largely obscure and under-appreciated. Picasso's friend Ignacio Zuloaga (1870–1945) acquired El Greco's masterpiece, the Opening of the Fifth Seal, in 1897 for 1000 pesetas. The relation between Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and the Opening of the Fifth Seal was pinpointed in the early 1980s, when the stylistic similarities and the relationship between the motifs and visually identifying qualities of both works were analyzed.El Greco's painting, which Picasso studied repeatedly in Zuloaga's house, inspired not only the size, format, and composition of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, but also its apocalyptic power. Later, speaking of the work to Dor de la Souchère in Antibes, Picasso said: "In any case, only the execution counts. From this point of view, it is correct to say that Cubism has a Spanish origin and that I invented Cubism. We must look for the Spanish influence in Cézanne. Things themselves necessitate it, the influence of El Greco, a Venetian painter, on him. But his structure is Cubist."The relationship of the painting to other group portraits in the Western tradition, such as Diana and Callisto by Titian (1488–1576), and the same subject by Rubens (1577–1640), in the Prado, has also been discussed.

Pablo Picasso, ''Nu aux bras levés (Nude),'' 1907

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Femme nue'', oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano

An illustration from Jouffret's ''Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions''. The book, which influenced Picasso, was given to him by Princet.

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure upper right).jpg

Category:Paintings in the Museum of Modern Art (New York City)

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Nu à la serviette'', oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery), oil on canvas, 61.4 x 47.6 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.jpg

File:Le Grand Baigneur, par Paul Cézanne, Yorck.jpg

File:Jacques Doucet's hôtel particulier, 33 rue Saint-James, Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1929 photograph Pierre Legrain.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Femme nue, oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano.jpg

File:Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika. Table II..jpg

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the lower right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure lower right).jpg

The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope

Pablo Picasso, ''Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery)'', 1907, oil on canvas, 61.4 × 47.6 cm, The [[Museum of Modern Art

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the upper right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu à la serviette, oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu aux bras levés (Nude).jpg

Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 book ''Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika''


Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Prompt: In Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, how is the El Greco of the Influences explained?

In 1907, when Picasso began work on Les Demoiselles, one of the old master painters he greatly admired was El Greco (1541–1614), who at the time was largely obscure and under-appreciated. Picasso's friend Ignacio Zuloaga (1870–1945) acquired El Greco's masterpiece, the Opening of the Fifth Seal, in 1897 for 1000 pesetas. The relation between Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and the Opening of the Fifth Seal was pinpointed in the early 1980s, when the stylistic similarities and the relationship between the motifs and visually identifying qualities of both works were analyzed.El Greco's painting, which Picasso studied repeatedly in Zuloaga's house, inspired not only the size, format, and composition of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, but also its apocalyptic power. Later, speaking of the work to Dor de la Souchère in Antibes, Picasso said: "In any case, only the execution counts. From this point of view, it is correct to say that Cubism has a Spanish origin and that I invented Cubism. We must look for the Spanish influence in Cézanne. Things themselves necessitate it, the influence of El Greco, a Venetian painter, on him. But his structure is Cubist."The relationship of the painting to other group portraits in the Western tradition, such as Diana and Callisto by Titian (1488–1576), and the same subject by Rubens (1577–1640), in the Prado, has also been discussed.

Pablo Picasso, ''Nu aux bras levés (Nude),'' 1907

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Femme nue'', oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano

An illustration from Jouffret's ''Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions''. The book, which influenced Picasso, was given to him by Princet.

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure upper right).jpg

Category:Paintings in the Museum of Modern Art (New York City)

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Nu à la serviette'', oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery), oil on canvas, 61.4 x 47.6 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.jpg

File:Le Grand Baigneur, par Paul Cézanne, Yorck.jpg

File:Jacques Doucet's hôtel particulier, 33 rue Saint-James, Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1929 photograph Pierre Legrain.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Femme nue, oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano.jpg

File:Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika. Table II..jpg

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the lower right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure lower right).jpg

The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope

Pablo Picasso, ''Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery)'', 1907, oil on canvas, 61.4 × 47.6 cm, The [[Museum of Modern Art

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the upper right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu à la serviette, oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu aux bras levés (Nude).jpg

Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 book ''Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika''


Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Prompt: Describe the characteristics of the El Greco in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon's Influences.

In 1907, when Picasso began work on Les Demoiselles, one of the old master painters he greatly admired was El Greco (1541–1614), who at the time was largely obscure and under-appreciated. Picasso's friend Ignacio Zuloaga (1870–1945) acquired El Greco's masterpiece, the Opening of the Fifth Seal, in 1897 for 1000 pesetas. The relation between Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and the Opening of the Fifth Seal was pinpointed in the early 1980s, when the stylistic similarities and the relationship between the motifs and visually identifying qualities of both works were analyzed.El Greco's painting, which Picasso studied repeatedly in Zuloaga's house, inspired not only the size, format, and composition of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, but also its apocalyptic power. Later, speaking of the work to Dor de la Souchère in Antibes, Picasso said: "In any case, only the execution counts. From this point of view, it is correct to say that Cubism has a Spanish origin and that I invented Cubism. We must look for the Spanish influence in Cézanne. Things themselves necessitate it, the influence of El Greco, a Venetian painter, on him. But his structure is Cubist."The relationship of the painting to other group portraits in the Western tradition, such as Diana and Callisto by Titian (1488–1576), and the same subject by Rubens (1577–1640), in the Prado, has also been discussed.

Pablo Picasso, ''Nu aux bras levés (Nude),'' 1907

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Femme nue'', oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano

An illustration from Jouffret's ''Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions''. The book, which influenced Picasso, was given to him by Princet.

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure upper right).jpg

Category:Paintings in the Museum of Modern Art (New York City)

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Nu à la serviette'', oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery), oil on canvas, 61.4 x 47.6 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.jpg

File:Le Grand Baigneur, par Paul Cézanne, Yorck.jpg

File:Jacques Doucet's hôtel particulier, 33 rue Saint-James, Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1929 photograph Pierre Legrain.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Femme nue, oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano.jpg

File:Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika. Table II..jpg

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the lower right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure lower right).jpg

The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope

Pablo Picasso, ''Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery)'', 1907, oil on canvas, 61.4 × 47.6 cm, The [[Museum of Modern Art

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the upper right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu à la serviette, oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu aux bras levés (Nude).jpg

Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 book ''Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika''


Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Prompt: In the context of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, explain the Cézanne and Cubism and the Influences.

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) and Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) were accorded major posthumous retrospective exhibitions at the Salon d'Automne in Paris between 1903 and 1907, and both were important influences on Picasso and instrumental to his creation of Les Demoiselles. According to the English art historian, collector and author of The Cubist Epoch, Douglas Cooper, both of those artists were particularly influential to the formation of Cubism and especially important to the paintings of Picasso during 1906 and 1907. Cooper goes on to say however Les Demoiselles is often erroneously referred to as the first Cubist painting. He explains,The Demoiselles is generally referred to as the first Cubist picture. This is an exaggeration, for although it was a major first step towards Cubism it is not yet Cubist. The disruptive, expressionist element in it is even contrary to the spirit of Cubism, which looked at the world in a detached, realistic spirit. Nevertheless, the Demoiselles is the logical picture to take as the starting point for Cubism, because it marks the birth of a new pictorial idiom, because in it Picasso violently overturned established conventions and because all that followed grew out of it.Although not well known to the general public prior to 1906, Cézanne's reputation was highly regarded in avant-garde circles, as evidenced by Ambroise Vollard's interest in showing and collecting his work, and by Leo Stein's interest. Picasso was familiar with much of Cézanne's work that he saw at Vollard's gallery and at the Stein's. After Cézanne died in 1906, his paintings were exhibited in Paris in a large scale museum-like retrospective in September 1907. The 1907 Cézanne retrospective at the Salon d'Automne greatly impacted the direction that the avant-garde in Paris took, lending credence to his position as one of the most influential artists of the 19th century and to the advent of Cubism. The 1907 Cézanne exhibition was enormously influential in establishing Cézanne as an important painter whose ideas were particularly resonant especially to young artists in Paris.Both Picasso and Braque found the inspiration for their proto-Cubist works in Paul Cézanne, who said to observe and learn to see and treat nature as if it were composed of basic shapes like cubes, spheres, cylinders, and cones. Cézanne's explorations of geometric simplification and optical phenomena inspired Picasso, Braque, Metzinger, Gleizes, Robert Delaunay, Le Fauconnier, Gris and others to experiment with ever more complex multiple views of the same subject, and, eventually to the fracturing of form. Cézanne thus sparked one of the most revolutionary areas of artistic enquiry of the 20th century, one which was to affect profoundly the development of modern art.

Pablo Picasso, ''Nu aux bras levés (Nude),'' 1907

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Femme nue'', oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano

An illustration from Jouffret's ''Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions''. The book, which influenced Picasso, was given to him by Princet.

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure upper right).jpg

Category:Paintings in the Museum of Modern Art (New York City)

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Nu à la serviette'', oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery), oil on canvas, 61.4 x 47.6 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.jpg

File:Le Grand Baigneur, par Paul Cézanne, Yorck.jpg

File:Jacques Doucet's hôtel particulier, 33 rue Saint-James, Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1929 photograph Pierre Legrain.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Femme nue, oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano.jpg

File:Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika. Table II..jpg

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the lower right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure lower right).jpg

The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope

Pablo Picasso, ''Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery)'', 1907, oil on canvas, 61.4 × 47.6 cm, The [[Museum of Modern Art

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the upper right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu à la serviette, oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu aux bras levés (Nude).jpg

Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 book ''Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika''


Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Prompt: Explain the Cézanne and Cubism about the Influences of this artwork, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) and Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) were accorded major posthumous retrospective exhibitions at the Salon d'Automne in Paris between 1903 and 1907, and both were important influences on Picasso and instrumental to his creation of Les Demoiselles. According to the English art historian, collector and author of The Cubist Epoch, Douglas Cooper, both of those artists were particularly influential to the formation of Cubism and especially important to the paintings of Picasso during 1906 and 1907. Cooper goes on to say however Les Demoiselles is often erroneously referred to as the first Cubist painting. He explains,The Demoiselles is generally referred to as the first Cubist picture. This is an exaggeration, for although it was a major first step towards Cubism it is not yet Cubist. The disruptive, expressionist element in it is even contrary to the spirit of Cubism, which looked at the world in a detached, realistic spirit. Nevertheless, the Demoiselles is the logical picture to take as the starting point for Cubism, because it marks the birth of a new pictorial idiom, because in it Picasso violently overturned established conventions and because all that followed grew out of it.Although not well known to the general public prior to 1906, Cézanne's reputation was highly regarded in avant-garde circles, as evidenced by Ambroise Vollard's interest in showing and collecting his work, and by Leo Stein's interest. Picasso was familiar with much of Cézanne's work that he saw at Vollard's gallery and at the Stein's. After Cézanne died in 1906, his paintings were exhibited in Paris in a large scale museum-like retrospective in September 1907. The 1907 Cézanne retrospective at the Salon d'Automne greatly impacted the direction that the avant-garde in Paris took, lending credence to his position as one of the most influential artists of the 19th century and to the advent of Cubism. The 1907 Cézanne exhibition was enormously influential in establishing Cézanne as an important painter whose ideas were particularly resonant especially to young artists in Paris.Both Picasso and Braque found the inspiration for their proto-Cubist works in Paul Cézanne, who said to observe and learn to see and treat nature as if it were composed of basic shapes like cubes, spheres, cylinders, and cones. Cézanne's explorations of geometric simplification and optical phenomena inspired Picasso, Braque, Metzinger, Gleizes, Robert Delaunay, Le Fauconnier, Gris and others to experiment with ever more complex multiple views of the same subject, and, eventually to the fracturing of form. Cézanne thus sparked one of the most revolutionary areas of artistic enquiry of the 20th century, one which was to affect profoundly the development of modern art.

Pablo Picasso, ''Nu aux bras levés (Nude),'' 1907

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Femme nue'', oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano

An illustration from Jouffret's ''Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions''. The book, which influenced Picasso, was given to him by Princet.

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure upper right).jpg

Category:Paintings in the Museum of Modern Art (New York City)

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Nu à la serviette'', oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery), oil on canvas, 61.4 x 47.6 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.jpg

File:Le Grand Baigneur, par Paul Cézanne, Yorck.jpg

File:Jacques Doucet's hôtel particulier, 33 rue Saint-James, Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1929 photograph Pierre Legrain.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Femme nue, oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano.jpg

File:Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika. Table II..jpg

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the lower right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure lower right).jpg

The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope

Pablo Picasso, ''Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery)'', 1907, oil on canvas, 61.4 × 47.6 cm, The [[Museum of Modern Art

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the upper right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu à la serviette, oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu aux bras levés (Nude).jpg

Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 book ''Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika''


Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Prompt: In Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, how is the Cézanne and Cubism of the Influences explained?

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) and Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) were accorded major posthumous retrospective exhibitions at the Salon d'Automne in Paris between 1903 and 1907, and both were important influences on Picasso and instrumental to his creation of Les Demoiselles. According to the English art historian, collector and author of The Cubist Epoch, Douglas Cooper, both of those artists were particularly influential to the formation of Cubism and especially important to the paintings of Picasso during 1906 and 1907. Cooper goes on to say however Les Demoiselles is often erroneously referred to as the first Cubist painting. He explains,The Demoiselles is generally referred to as the first Cubist picture. This is an exaggeration, for although it was a major first step towards Cubism it is not yet Cubist. The disruptive, expressionist element in it is even contrary to the spirit of Cubism, which looked at the world in a detached, realistic spirit. Nevertheless, the Demoiselles is the logical picture to take as the starting point for Cubism, because it marks the birth of a new pictorial idiom, because in it Picasso violently overturned established conventions and because all that followed grew out of it.Although not well known to the general public prior to 1906, Cézanne's reputation was highly regarded in avant-garde circles, as evidenced by Ambroise Vollard's interest in showing and collecting his work, and by Leo Stein's interest. Picasso was familiar with much of Cézanne's work that he saw at Vollard's gallery and at the Stein's. After Cézanne died in 1906, his paintings were exhibited in Paris in a large scale museum-like retrospective in September 1907. The 1907 Cézanne retrospective at the Salon d'Automne greatly impacted the direction that the avant-garde in Paris took, lending credence to his position as one of the most influential artists of the 19th century and to the advent of Cubism. The 1907 Cézanne exhibition was enormously influential in establishing Cézanne as an important painter whose ideas were particularly resonant especially to young artists in Paris.Both Picasso and Braque found the inspiration for their proto-Cubist works in Paul Cézanne, who said to observe and learn to see and treat nature as if it were composed of basic shapes like cubes, spheres, cylinders, and cones. Cézanne's explorations of geometric simplification and optical phenomena inspired Picasso, Braque, Metzinger, Gleizes, Robert Delaunay, Le Fauconnier, Gris and others to experiment with ever more complex multiple views of the same subject, and, eventually to the fracturing of form. Cézanne thus sparked one of the most revolutionary areas of artistic enquiry of the 20th century, one which was to affect profoundly the development of modern art.

Pablo Picasso, ''Nu aux bras levés (Nude),'' 1907

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Femme nue'', oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano

An illustration from Jouffret's ''Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions''. The book, which influenced Picasso, was given to him by Princet.

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure upper right).jpg

Category:Paintings in the Museum of Modern Art (New York City)

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Nu à la serviette'', oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery), oil on canvas, 61.4 x 47.6 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.jpg

File:Le Grand Baigneur, par Paul Cézanne, Yorck.jpg

File:Jacques Doucet's hôtel particulier, 33 rue Saint-James, Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1929 photograph Pierre Legrain.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Femme nue, oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano.jpg

File:Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika. Table II..jpg

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the lower right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure lower right).jpg

The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope

Pablo Picasso, ''Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery)'', 1907, oil on canvas, 61.4 × 47.6 cm, The [[Museum of Modern Art

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the upper right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu à la serviette, oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu aux bras levés (Nude).jpg

Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 book ''Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika''


Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Prompt: Describe the characteristics of the Cézanne and Cubism in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon's Influences.

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) and Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) were accorded major posthumous retrospective exhibitions at the Salon d'Automne in Paris between 1903 and 1907, and both were important influences on Picasso and instrumental to his creation of Les Demoiselles. According to the English art historian, collector and author of The Cubist Epoch, Douglas Cooper, both of those artists were particularly influential to the formation of Cubism and especially important to the paintings of Picasso during 1906 and 1907. Cooper goes on to say however Les Demoiselles is often erroneously referred to as the first Cubist painting. He explains,The Demoiselles is generally referred to as the first Cubist picture. This is an exaggeration, for although it was a major first step towards Cubism it is not yet Cubist. The disruptive, expressionist element in it is even contrary to the spirit of Cubism, which looked at the world in a detached, realistic spirit. Nevertheless, the Demoiselles is the logical picture to take as the starting point for Cubism, because it marks the birth of a new pictorial idiom, because in it Picasso violently overturned established conventions and because all that followed grew out of it.Although not well known to the general public prior to 1906, Cézanne's reputation was highly regarded in avant-garde circles, as evidenced by Ambroise Vollard's interest in showing and collecting his work, and by Leo Stein's interest. Picasso was familiar with much of Cézanne's work that he saw at Vollard's gallery and at the Stein's. After Cézanne died in 1906, his paintings were exhibited in Paris in a large scale museum-like retrospective in September 1907. The 1907 Cézanne retrospective at the Salon d'Automne greatly impacted the direction that the avant-garde in Paris took, lending credence to his position as one of the most influential artists of the 19th century and to the advent of Cubism. The 1907 Cézanne exhibition was enormously influential in establishing Cézanne as an important painter whose ideas were particularly resonant especially to young artists in Paris.Both Picasso and Braque found the inspiration for their proto-Cubist works in Paul Cézanne, who said to observe and learn to see and treat nature as if it were composed of basic shapes like cubes, spheres, cylinders, and cones. Cézanne's explorations of geometric simplification and optical phenomena inspired Picasso, Braque, Metzinger, Gleizes, Robert Delaunay, Le Fauconnier, Gris and others to experiment with ever more complex multiple views of the same subject, and, eventually to the fracturing of form. Cézanne thus sparked one of the most revolutionary areas of artistic enquiry of the 20th century, one which was to affect profoundly the development of modern art.

Pablo Picasso, ''Nu aux bras levés (Nude),'' 1907

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Femme nue'', oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano

An illustration from Jouffret's ''Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions''. The book, which influenced Picasso, was given to him by Princet.

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure upper right).jpg

Category:Paintings in the Museum of Modern Art (New York City)

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Nu à la serviette'', oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery), oil on canvas, 61.4 x 47.6 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.jpg

File:Le Grand Baigneur, par Paul Cézanne, Yorck.jpg

File:Jacques Doucet's hôtel particulier, 33 rue Saint-James, Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1929 photograph Pierre Legrain.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Femme nue, oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano.jpg

File:Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika. Table II..jpg

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the lower right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure lower right).jpg

The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope

Pablo Picasso, ''Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery)'', 1907, oil on canvas, 61.4 × 47.6 cm, The [[Museum of Modern Art

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the upper right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu à la serviette, oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu aux bras levés (Nude).jpg

Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 book ''Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika''


Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Prompt: In the context of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, explain the Gauguin and Primitivism and the Influences.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the European cultural elite were discovering African, Oceanic and Native American art. Artists such as Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse and Picasso were intrigued and inspired by the stark power and simplicity of styles of those cultures. Around 1906, Picasso, Matisse, Derain and other artists in Paris had acquired an interest in primitivism, Iberian sculpture, African art and tribal masks, in part because of the compelling works of Paul Gauguin that had suddenly achieved center stage in the avant-garde circles of Paris. Gauguin's powerful posthumous retrospective exhibitions at the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1903 and an even larger one in 1906 had a stunning and powerful influence on Picasso's paintings.In the autumn of 1906, Picasso followed his previous successes with paintings of oversized nude women, and monumental sculptural figures that recalled the work of Paul Gauguin and showed his interest in primitive art. Pablo Picasso's paintings of massive figures from 1906 were directly influenced by Gauguin's sculpture, painting and his writing as well.According to Gauguin biographer David Sweetman, Pablo Picasso as early as 1902 became an aficionado of Gauguin's work when he met and befriended the expatriate Spanish sculptor and ceramist Paco Durrio, in Paris. Durrio had several of Gauguin's works on hand because he was a friend of Gauguin's and an unpaid agent of his work. Durrio tried to help his poverty-stricken friend in Tahiti by promoting his oeuvre in Paris. After they met Durrio introduced Picasso to Gauguin's stoneware, helped Picasso make some ceramic pieces and gave Picasso a first La Plume edition of Noa Noa: The Tahiti Journal of Paul Gauguin.Concerning Gauguin's impact on Picasso, art historian John Richardson wrote,The 1906 exhibition of Gauguin's work left Picasso more than ever in this artist's thrall. Gauguin demonstrated the most disparate types of art—not to speak of elements from metaphysics, ethnology, symbolism, the Bible, classical myths, and much else besides—could be combined into a synthesis that was of its time yet timeless. An artist could also confound conventional notions of beauty, he demonstrated, by harnessing his demons to the dark gods (not necessarily Tahitian ones) and tapping a new source of divine energy. If in later years Picasso played down his debt to Gauguin, there is no doubt that between 1905 and 1907 he felt a very close kinship with this other Paul, who prided himself on Spanish genes inherited from his Peruvian grandmother. Had not Picasso signed himself 'Paul' in Gauguin's honor.Both David Sweetman and John Richardson point to Gauguin's Oviri (literally meaning 'savage'), a gruesome phallic representation of the Tahitian goddess of life and death intended for Gauguin's grave. First exhibited in the 1906 retrospective, it was likely a direct influence on Les Demoiselles. Sweetman writes,Gauguin's statue Oviri, which was prominently displayed in 1906, was to stimulate Picasso's interest in both sculpture and ceramics, while the woodcuts would reinforce his interest in print-making, though it was the element of the primitive in all of them which most conditioned the direction that Picasso's art would take. This interest would culminate in the seminal Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.According to Richardson,Picasso's interest in stoneware was further stimulated by the examples he saw at the 1906 Gauguin retrospective at the Salon d'Automne. The most disturbing of those ceramics (one that Picasso might have already seen at Vollard's) was the gruesome Oviri. Until 1987, when the Musée d'Orsay acquired this little-known work (exhibited only once since 1906) it had never been recognized as the masterpiece it is, let alone recognized for its relevance to the works leading up to the Demoiselles. Although just under 30 inches high, Oviri has an awesome presence, as befits a monument intended for Gauguin's grave. Picasso was very struck by Oviri. 50 years later he was delighted when [Douglas] Cooper and I told him that we had come upon this sculpture in a collection that also included the original plaster of his Cubist head. Has it been a revelation, like Iberian sculpture? Picasso's shrug was grudgingly affirmative. He was always loath to admit Gauguin's role in setting him on the road to primitivism.

Pablo Picasso, ''Nu aux bras levés (Nude),'' 1907

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Femme nue'', oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano

An illustration from Jouffret's ''Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions''. The book, which influenced Picasso, was given to him by Princet.

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure upper right).jpg

Category:Paintings in the Museum of Modern Art (New York City)

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Nu à la serviette'', oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery), oil on canvas, 61.4 x 47.6 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.jpg

File:Le Grand Baigneur, par Paul Cézanne, Yorck.jpg

File:Jacques Doucet's hôtel particulier, 33 rue Saint-James, Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1929 photograph Pierre Legrain.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Femme nue, oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano.jpg

File:Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika. Table II..jpg

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the lower right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure lower right).jpg

The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope

Pablo Picasso, ''Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery)'', 1907, oil on canvas, 61.4 × 47.6 cm, The [[Museum of Modern Art

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the upper right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu à la serviette, oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu aux bras levés (Nude).jpg

Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 book ''Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika''


Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Prompt: Explain the Gauguin and Primitivism about the Influences of this artwork, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the European cultural elite were discovering African, Oceanic and Native American art. Artists such as Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse and Picasso were intrigued and inspired by the stark power and simplicity of styles of those cultures. Around 1906, Picasso, Matisse, Derain and other artists in Paris had acquired an interest in primitivism, Iberian sculpture, African art and tribal masks, in part because of the compelling works of Paul Gauguin that had suddenly achieved center stage in the avant-garde circles of Paris. Gauguin's powerful posthumous retrospective exhibitions at the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1903 and an even larger one in 1906 had a stunning and powerful influence on Picasso's paintings.In the autumn of 1906, Picasso followed his previous successes with paintings of oversized nude women, and monumental sculptural figures that recalled the work of Paul Gauguin and showed his interest in primitive art. Pablo Picasso's paintings of massive figures from 1906 were directly influenced by Gauguin's sculpture, painting and his writing as well.According to Gauguin biographer David Sweetman, Pablo Picasso as early as 1902 became an aficionado of Gauguin's work when he met and befriended the expatriate Spanish sculptor and ceramist Paco Durrio, in Paris. Durrio had several of Gauguin's works on hand because he was a friend of Gauguin's and an unpaid agent of his work. Durrio tried to help his poverty-stricken friend in Tahiti by promoting his oeuvre in Paris. After they met Durrio introduced Picasso to Gauguin's stoneware, helped Picasso make some ceramic pieces and gave Picasso a first La Plume edition of Noa Noa: The Tahiti Journal of Paul Gauguin.Concerning Gauguin's impact on Picasso, art historian John Richardson wrote,The 1906 exhibition of Gauguin's work left Picasso more than ever in this artist's thrall. Gauguin demonstrated the most disparate types of art—not to speak of elements from metaphysics, ethnology, symbolism, the Bible, classical myths, and much else besides—could be combined into a synthesis that was of its time yet timeless. An artist could also confound conventional notions of beauty, he demonstrated, by harnessing his demons to the dark gods (not necessarily Tahitian ones) and tapping a new source of divine energy. If in later years Picasso played down his debt to Gauguin, there is no doubt that between 1905 and 1907 he felt a very close kinship with this other Paul, who prided himself on Spanish genes inherited from his Peruvian grandmother. Had not Picasso signed himself 'Paul' in Gauguin's honor.Both David Sweetman and John Richardson point to Gauguin's Oviri (literally meaning 'savage'), a gruesome phallic representation of the Tahitian goddess of life and death intended for Gauguin's grave. First exhibited in the 1906 retrospective, it was likely a direct influence on Les Demoiselles. Sweetman writes,Gauguin's statue Oviri, which was prominently displayed in 1906, was to stimulate Picasso's interest in both sculpture and ceramics, while the woodcuts would reinforce his interest in print-making, though it was the element of the primitive in all of them which most conditioned the direction that Picasso's art would take. This interest would culminate in the seminal Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.According to Richardson,Picasso's interest in stoneware was further stimulated by the examples he saw at the 1906 Gauguin retrospective at the Salon d'Automne. The most disturbing of those ceramics (one that Picasso might have already seen at Vollard's) was the gruesome Oviri. Until 1987, when the Musée d'Orsay acquired this little-known work (exhibited only once since 1906) it had never been recognized as the masterpiece it is, let alone recognized for its relevance to the works leading up to the Demoiselles. Although just under 30 inches high, Oviri has an awesome presence, as befits a monument intended for Gauguin's grave. Picasso was very struck by Oviri. 50 years later he was delighted when [Douglas] Cooper and I told him that we had come upon this sculpture in a collection that also included the original plaster of his Cubist head. Has it been a revelation, like Iberian sculpture? Picasso's shrug was grudgingly affirmative. He was always loath to admit Gauguin's role in setting him on the road to primitivism.

Pablo Picasso, ''Nu aux bras levés (Nude),'' 1907

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Femme nue'', oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano

An illustration from Jouffret's ''Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions''. The book, which influenced Picasso, was given to him by Princet.

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure upper right).jpg

Category:Paintings in the Museum of Modern Art (New York City)

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Nu à la serviette'', oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery), oil on canvas, 61.4 x 47.6 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.jpg

File:Le Grand Baigneur, par Paul Cézanne, Yorck.jpg

File:Jacques Doucet's hôtel particulier, 33 rue Saint-James, Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1929 photograph Pierre Legrain.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Femme nue, oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano.jpg

File:Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika. Table II..jpg

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the lower right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure lower right).jpg

The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope

Pablo Picasso, ''Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery)'', 1907, oil on canvas, 61.4 × 47.6 cm, The [[Museum of Modern Art

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the upper right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu à la serviette, oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu aux bras levés (Nude).jpg

Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 book ''Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika''


Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Prompt: In Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, how is the Gauguin and Primitivism of the Influences explained?

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the European cultural elite were discovering African, Oceanic and Native American art. Artists such as Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse and Picasso were intrigued and inspired by the stark power and simplicity of styles of those cultures. Around 1906, Picasso, Matisse, Derain and other artists in Paris had acquired an interest in primitivism, Iberian sculpture, African art and tribal masks, in part because of the compelling works of Paul Gauguin that had suddenly achieved center stage in the avant-garde circles of Paris. Gauguin's powerful posthumous retrospective exhibitions at the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1903 and an even larger one in 1906 had a stunning and powerful influence on Picasso's paintings.In the autumn of 1906, Picasso followed his previous successes with paintings of oversized nude women, and monumental sculptural figures that recalled the work of Paul Gauguin and showed his interest in primitive art. Pablo Picasso's paintings of massive figures from 1906 were directly influenced by Gauguin's sculpture, painting and his writing as well.According to Gauguin biographer David Sweetman, Pablo Picasso as early as 1902 became an aficionado of Gauguin's work when he met and befriended the expatriate Spanish sculptor and ceramist Paco Durrio, in Paris. Durrio had several of Gauguin's works on hand because he was a friend of Gauguin's and an unpaid agent of his work. Durrio tried to help his poverty-stricken friend in Tahiti by promoting his oeuvre in Paris. After they met Durrio introduced Picasso to Gauguin's stoneware, helped Picasso make some ceramic pieces and gave Picasso a first La Plume edition of Noa Noa: The Tahiti Journal of Paul Gauguin.Concerning Gauguin's impact on Picasso, art historian John Richardson wrote,The 1906 exhibition of Gauguin's work left Picasso more than ever in this artist's thrall. Gauguin demonstrated the most disparate types of art—not to speak of elements from metaphysics, ethnology, symbolism, the Bible, classical myths, and much else besides—could be combined into a synthesis that was of its time yet timeless. An artist could also confound conventional notions of beauty, he demonstrated, by harnessing his demons to the dark gods (not necessarily Tahitian ones) and tapping a new source of divine energy. If in later years Picasso played down his debt to Gauguin, there is no doubt that between 1905 and 1907 he felt a very close kinship with this other Paul, who prided himself on Spanish genes inherited from his Peruvian grandmother. Had not Picasso signed himself 'Paul' in Gauguin's honor.Both David Sweetman and John Richardson point to Gauguin's Oviri (literally meaning 'savage'), a gruesome phallic representation of the Tahitian goddess of life and death intended for Gauguin's grave. First exhibited in the 1906 retrospective, it was likely a direct influence on Les Demoiselles. Sweetman writes,Gauguin's statue Oviri, which was prominently displayed in 1906, was to stimulate Picasso's interest in both sculpture and ceramics, while the woodcuts would reinforce his interest in print-making, though it was the element of the primitive in all of them which most conditioned the direction that Picasso's art would take. This interest would culminate in the seminal Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.According to Richardson,Picasso's interest in stoneware was further stimulated by the examples he saw at the 1906 Gauguin retrospective at the Salon d'Automne. The most disturbing of those ceramics (one that Picasso might have already seen at Vollard's) was the gruesome Oviri. Until 1987, when the Musée d'Orsay acquired this little-known work (exhibited only once since 1906) it had never been recognized as the masterpiece it is, let alone recognized for its relevance to the works leading up to the Demoiselles. Although just under 30 inches high, Oviri has an awesome presence, as befits a monument intended for Gauguin's grave. Picasso was very struck by Oviri. 50 years later he was delighted when [Douglas] Cooper and I told him that we had come upon this sculpture in a collection that also included the original plaster of his Cubist head. Has it been a revelation, like Iberian sculpture? Picasso's shrug was grudgingly affirmative. He was always loath to admit Gauguin's role in setting him on the road to primitivism.

Pablo Picasso, ''Nu aux bras levés (Nude),'' 1907

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Femme nue'', oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano

An illustration from Jouffret's ''Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions''. The book, which influenced Picasso, was given to him by Princet.

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure upper right).jpg

Category:Paintings in the Museum of Modern Art (New York City)

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Nu à la serviette'', oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery), oil on canvas, 61.4 x 47.6 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.jpg

File:Le Grand Baigneur, par Paul Cézanne, Yorck.jpg

File:Jacques Doucet's hôtel particulier, 33 rue Saint-James, Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1929 photograph Pierre Legrain.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Femme nue, oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano.jpg

File:Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika. Table II..jpg

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the lower right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure lower right).jpg

The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope

Pablo Picasso, ''Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery)'', 1907, oil on canvas, 61.4 × 47.6 cm, The [[Museum of Modern Art

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the upper right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu à la serviette, oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu aux bras levés (Nude).jpg

Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 book ''Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika''


Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Prompt: Describe the characteristics of the Gauguin and Primitivism in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon's Influences.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the European cultural elite were discovering African, Oceanic and Native American art. Artists such as Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse and Picasso were intrigued and inspired by the stark power and simplicity of styles of those cultures. Around 1906, Picasso, Matisse, Derain and other artists in Paris had acquired an interest in primitivism, Iberian sculpture, African art and tribal masks, in part because of the compelling works of Paul Gauguin that had suddenly achieved center stage in the avant-garde circles of Paris. Gauguin's powerful posthumous retrospective exhibitions at the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1903 and an even larger one in 1906 had a stunning and powerful influence on Picasso's paintings.In the autumn of 1906, Picasso followed his previous successes with paintings of oversized nude women, and monumental sculptural figures that recalled the work of Paul Gauguin and showed his interest in primitive art. Pablo Picasso's paintings of massive figures from 1906 were directly influenced by Gauguin's sculpture, painting and his writing as well.According to Gauguin biographer David Sweetman, Pablo Picasso as early as 1902 became an aficionado of Gauguin's work when he met and befriended the expatriate Spanish sculptor and ceramist Paco Durrio, in Paris. Durrio had several of Gauguin's works on hand because he was a friend of Gauguin's and an unpaid agent of his work. Durrio tried to help his poverty-stricken friend in Tahiti by promoting his oeuvre in Paris. After they met Durrio introduced Picasso to Gauguin's stoneware, helped Picasso make some ceramic pieces and gave Picasso a first La Plume edition of Noa Noa: The Tahiti Journal of Paul Gauguin.Concerning Gauguin's impact on Picasso, art historian John Richardson wrote,The 1906 exhibition of Gauguin's work left Picasso more than ever in this artist's thrall. Gauguin demonstrated the most disparate types of art—not to speak of elements from metaphysics, ethnology, symbolism, the Bible, classical myths, and much else besides—could be combined into a synthesis that was of its time yet timeless. An artist could also confound conventional notions of beauty, he demonstrated, by harnessing his demons to the dark gods (not necessarily Tahitian ones) and tapping a new source of divine energy. If in later years Picasso played down his debt to Gauguin, there is no doubt that between 1905 and 1907 he felt a very close kinship with this other Paul, who prided himself on Spanish genes inherited from his Peruvian grandmother. Had not Picasso signed himself 'Paul' in Gauguin's honor.Both David Sweetman and John Richardson point to Gauguin's Oviri (literally meaning 'savage'), a gruesome phallic representation of the Tahitian goddess of life and death intended for Gauguin's grave. First exhibited in the 1906 retrospective, it was likely a direct influence on Les Demoiselles. Sweetman writes,Gauguin's statue Oviri, which was prominently displayed in 1906, was to stimulate Picasso's interest in both sculpture and ceramics, while the woodcuts would reinforce his interest in print-making, though it was the element of the primitive in all of them which most conditioned the direction that Picasso's art would take. This interest would culminate in the seminal Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.According to Richardson,Picasso's interest in stoneware was further stimulated by the examples he saw at the 1906 Gauguin retrospective at the Salon d'Automne. The most disturbing of those ceramics (one that Picasso might have already seen at Vollard's) was the gruesome Oviri. Until 1987, when the Musée d'Orsay acquired this little-known work (exhibited only once since 1906) it had never been recognized as the masterpiece it is, let alone recognized for its relevance to the works leading up to the Demoiselles. Although just under 30 inches high, Oviri has an awesome presence, as befits a monument intended for Gauguin's grave. Picasso was very struck by Oviri. 50 years later he was delighted when [Douglas] Cooper and I told him that we had come upon this sculpture in a collection that also included the original plaster of his Cubist head. Has it been a revelation, like Iberian sculpture? Picasso's shrug was grudgingly affirmative. He was always loath to admit Gauguin's role in setting him on the road to primitivism.

Pablo Picasso, ''Nu aux bras levés (Nude),'' 1907

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Femme nue'', oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano

An illustration from Jouffret's ''Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions''. The book, which influenced Picasso, was given to him by Princet.

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure upper right).jpg

Category:Paintings in the Museum of Modern Art (New York City)

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Nu à la serviette'', oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery), oil on canvas, 61.4 x 47.6 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.jpg

File:Le Grand Baigneur, par Paul Cézanne, Yorck.jpg

File:Jacques Doucet's hôtel particulier, 33 rue Saint-James, Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1929 photograph Pierre Legrain.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Femme nue, oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano.jpg

File:Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika. Table II..jpg

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the lower right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure lower right).jpg

The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope

Pablo Picasso, ''Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery)'', 1907, oil on canvas, 61.4 × 47.6 cm, The [[Museum of Modern Art

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the upper right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu à la serviette, oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu aux bras levés (Nude).jpg

Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 book ''Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika''


Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Prompt: In the context of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, explain the African and Iberian art and the Influences.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, Europe's colonization of Africa led to many economic, social, political, and even artistic encounters. From these encounters, Western visual artists became increasingly interested in the unique forms of African art, particularly masks from the Niger-Congo region. In an essay by Dennis Duerden, author of African Art (1968), The Invisible Present (1972), and a former director of the BBC World Service, the mask is defined as "very often a complete head-dress and not just that part that conceals the face". This form of visual art and image appealed to Western visual artists, leading to what Duerden calls the "discovery" of African art by Western practitioners, including Picasso.The stylistic sources for the heads of the women and their degree of influence has been much discussed and debated, in particular the influence of African tribal masks, art of Oceania, and pre-Roman Iberian sculptures. The rounded contours of the features of the three women to the left can be related to Iberian sculpture, but not obviously the fragmented planes of the two on the right, which indeed seem influenced by African masks. Lawrence Weschler says that, in many ways, much of the moldering cultural and even scientific ferment that characterized the first decade and a half of the twentieth century and that laid the foundations for much of what we today consider modern can be traced back to ways in which Europe was already wrestling with its bad-faith, often strenuously repressed, knowledge of what it had been doing in Africa. The example of Picasso virtually launching cubism with his 1907 Desmoiselles d’Avignon, in response to the sorts of African masks and other colonial booty he was encountering in Paris’s Musee de l’Homme, is obvious.Private collections and illustrated books featuring African art in this period were also important. While Picasso emphatically denied the influence of African masks on the painting: "African art? Never heard of it!" (L'art nègre? Connais pas!), this is belied by his deep interest in the African sculptures owned by Matisse and his close friend Guiliaume Apollinaire. Since none of the African masks once thought to have influenced Picasso in this painting were available in Paris at the time work was painted, he is thought now to have studied African mask forms in an illustrated volume by anthropologist Leo Frobenius. Primitivism continues in his work during, before and after the painting of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, from spring 1906 through the spring of 1907. Influences from ancient Iberian sculpture are also important. Some Iberian reliefs from Osuna, then only recently excavated, were on display in the Louvre from 1904. Archaic Greek sculpture has also been claimed as an influence.Contentions about the influence of African sculpture were fueled in 1939 when Alfred Barr said the primitivism of the Demoiselles derived from the art of Côte d'Ivoire and the French Congo. Picasso subsequently insisted his catalogue raissonne’s editor Christian Zervos publish a disclaimer in which Picasso certified that he was not aware of African art until after Demoiselles was completed, but that he had instead drawn from Iberian art he had seen a year or so earlier, in particular from the Louvre’s Osuna reliefs. Contradictingly, in 1944 Picasso recounted seeing African art and being greatly moved by it during Demoiselles’  creation, adding that the experience was revelatory and a pivotal moment in the painting’s formulation. To Andre Malraux he said the revelations of African sculpture came to him from visiting to the Ethnographic Museum of the Trocadero. As Picasso recalled, "When I went to the Trocadero, it was disgusting. The flea market, the smell. I was all alone. I wanted to get away, but I didn't leave. I stayed, I stayed. I understood that it was very important. Something was happening to me, right. The masks weren't like any other pieces of sculpture, not at all. They were magic things." Maurice de Vlaminck is often credited with introducing Picasso to African sculpture of Fang extraction in 1904.Picasso biographer John Richardson recounts in A Life of Picasso, The Cubist Rebel 1907–1916 art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler's recollection of his first visit to Picasso's studio in July 1907. Kahnweiler remembers seeing "dusty stacks of canvases" in Picasso's studio and "African sculptures of majestic severity". Richardson comments: "so much for Picasso's story that he was not yet aware of Tribal art.'" A photograph of Picasso in his studio surrounded by African sculptures c.1908, is found on page 27 of that same volume.Suzanne Preston Blier says that, like Gauguin and several other artists in this era, Picasso used illustrated books for many of his preliminary studies for this painting. In addition to the Frobenius book, his sources included a 1906 publication of a twelfth-century Medieval art manuscript on architectural sculpture by Villiard de Honnecourt and a book by Carl Heinrich Stratz of pseudo-pornography showing photos and drawings of women from around the world organized to evoke ideas of human origins and evolution. Blier suggests that this helps account for the diversity of styles Picasso employed in his image-filled sketchbooks for this painting. These books, and other sources such as cartoons, Blier writes, also offer hints as to the larger meaning of this painting.

Pablo Picasso, ''Nu aux bras levés (Nude),'' 1907

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Femme nue'', oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano

An illustration from Jouffret's ''Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions''. The book, which influenced Picasso, was given to him by Princet.

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure upper right).jpg

Category:Paintings in the Museum of Modern Art (New York City)

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Nu à la serviette'', oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery), oil on canvas, 61.4 x 47.6 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.jpg

File:Le Grand Baigneur, par Paul Cézanne, Yorck.jpg

File:Jacques Doucet's hôtel particulier, 33 rue Saint-James, Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1929 photograph Pierre Legrain.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Femme nue, oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano.jpg

File:Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika. Table II..jpg

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the lower right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure lower right).jpg

The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope

Pablo Picasso, ''Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery)'', 1907, oil on canvas, 61.4 × 47.6 cm, The [[Museum of Modern Art

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the upper right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu à la serviette, oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu aux bras levés (Nude).jpg

Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 book ''Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika''


Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Prompt: Explain the African and Iberian art about the Influences of this artwork, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, Europe's colonization of Africa led to many economic, social, political, and even artistic encounters. From these encounters, Western visual artists became increasingly interested in the unique forms of African art, particularly masks from the Niger-Congo region. In an essay by Dennis Duerden, author of African Art (1968), The Invisible Present (1972), and a former director of the BBC World Service, the mask is defined as "very often a complete head-dress and not just that part that conceals the face". This form of visual art and image appealed to Western visual artists, leading to what Duerden calls the "discovery" of African art by Western practitioners, including Picasso.The stylistic sources for the heads of the women and their degree of influence has been much discussed and debated, in particular the influence of African tribal masks, art of Oceania, and pre-Roman Iberian sculptures. The rounded contours of the features of the three women to the left can be related to Iberian sculpture, but not obviously the fragmented planes of the two on the right, which indeed seem influenced by African masks. Lawrence Weschler says that, in many ways, much of the moldering cultural and even scientific ferment that characterized the first decade and a half of the twentieth century and that laid the foundations for much of what we today consider modern can be traced back to ways in which Europe was already wrestling with its bad-faith, often strenuously repressed, knowledge of what it had been doing in Africa. The example of Picasso virtually launching cubism with his 1907 Desmoiselles d’Avignon, in response to the sorts of African masks and other colonial booty he was encountering in Paris’s Musee de l’Homme, is obvious.Private collections and illustrated books featuring African art in this period were also important. While Picasso emphatically denied the influence of African masks on the painting: "African art? Never heard of it!" (L'art nègre? Connais pas!), this is belied by his deep interest in the African sculptures owned by Matisse and his close friend Guiliaume Apollinaire. Since none of the African masks once thought to have influenced Picasso in this painting were available in Paris at the time work was painted, he is thought now to have studied African mask forms in an illustrated volume by anthropologist Leo Frobenius. Primitivism continues in his work during, before and after the painting of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, from spring 1906 through the spring of 1907. Influences from ancient Iberian sculpture are also important. Some Iberian reliefs from Osuna, then only recently excavated, were on display in the Louvre from 1904. Archaic Greek sculpture has also been claimed as an influence.Contentions about the influence of African sculpture were fueled in 1939 when Alfred Barr said the primitivism of the Demoiselles derived from the art of Côte d'Ivoire and the French Congo. Picasso subsequently insisted his catalogue raissonne’s editor Christian Zervos publish a disclaimer in which Picasso certified that he was not aware of African art until after Demoiselles was completed, but that he had instead drawn from Iberian art he had seen a year or so earlier, in particular from the Louvre’s Osuna reliefs. Contradictingly, in 1944 Picasso recounted seeing African art and being greatly moved by it during Demoiselles’  creation, adding that the experience was revelatory and a pivotal moment in the painting’s formulation. To Andre Malraux he said the revelations of African sculpture came to him from visiting to the Ethnographic Museum of the Trocadero. As Picasso recalled, "When I went to the Trocadero, it was disgusting. The flea market, the smell. I was all alone. I wanted to get away, but I didn't leave. I stayed, I stayed. I understood that it was very important. Something was happening to me, right. The masks weren't like any other pieces of sculpture, not at all. They were magic things." Maurice de Vlaminck is often credited with introducing Picasso to African sculpture of Fang extraction in 1904.Picasso biographer John Richardson recounts in A Life of Picasso, The Cubist Rebel 1907–1916 art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler's recollection of his first visit to Picasso's studio in July 1907. Kahnweiler remembers seeing "dusty stacks of canvases" in Picasso's studio and "African sculptures of majestic severity". Richardson comments: "so much for Picasso's story that he was not yet aware of Tribal art.'" A photograph of Picasso in his studio surrounded by African sculptures c.1908, is found on page 27 of that same volume.Suzanne Preston Blier says that, like Gauguin and several other artists in this era, Picasso used illustrated books for many of his preliminary studies for this painting. In addition to the Frobenius book, his sources included a 1906 publication of a twelfth-century Medieval art manuscript on architectural sculpture by Villiard de Honnecourt and a book by Carl Heinrich Stratz of pseudo-pornography showing photos and drawings of women from around the world organized to evoke ideas of human origins and evolution. Blier suggests that this helps account for the diversity of styles Picasso employed in his image-filled sketchbooks for this painting. These books, and other sources such as cartoons, Blier writes, also offer hints as to the larger meaning of this painting.

Pablo Picasso, ''Nu aux bras levés (Nude),'' 1907

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Femme nue'', oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano

An illustration from Jouffret's ''Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions''. The book, which influenced Picasso, was given to him by Princet.

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure upper right).jpg

Category:Paintings in the Museum of Modern Art (New York City)

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Nu à la serviette'', oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery), oil on canvas, 61.4 x 47.6 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.jpg

File:Le Grand Baigneur, par Paul Cézanne, Yorck.jpg

File:Jacques Doucet's hôtel particulier, 33 rue Saint-James, Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1929 photograph Pierre Legrain.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Femme nue, oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano.jpg

File:Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika. Table II..jpg

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the lower right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure lower right).jpg

The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope

Pablo Picasso, ''Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery)'', 1907, oil on canvas, 61.4 × 47.6 cm, The [[Museum of Modern Art

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the upper right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu à la serviette, oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu aux bras levés (Nude).jpg

Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 book ''Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika''


Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Prompt: In Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, how is the African and Iberian art of the Influences explained?

During the 19th and 20th centuries, Europe's colonization of Africa led to many economic, social, political, and even artistic encounters. From these encounters, Western visual artists became increasingly interested in the unique forms of African art, particularly masks from the Niger-Congo region. In an essay by Dennis Duerden, author of African Art (1968), The Invisible Present (1972), and a former director of the BBC World Service, the mask is defined as "very often a complete head-dress and not just that part that conceals the face". This form of visual art and image appealed to Western visual artists, leading to what Duerden calls the "discovery" of African art by Western practitioners, including Picasso.The stylistic sources for the heads of the women and their degree of influence has been much discussed and debated, in particular the influence of African tribal masks, art of Oceania, and pre-Roman Iberian sculptures. The rounded contours of the features of the three women to the left can be related to Iberian sculpture, but not obviously the fragmented planes of the two on the right, which indeed seem influenced by African masks. Lawrence Weschler says that, in many ways, much of the moldering cultural and even scientific ferment that characterized the first decade and a half of the twentieth century and that laid the foundations for much of what we today consider modern can be traced back to ways in which Europe was already wrestling with its bad-faith, often strenuously repressed, knowledge of what it had been doing in Africa. The example of Picasso virtually launching cubism with his 1907 Desmoiselles d’Avignon, in response to the sorts of African masks and other colonial booty he was encountering in Paris’s Musee de l’Homme, is obvious.Private collections and illustrated books featuring African art in this period were also important. While Picasso emphatically denied the influence of African masks on the painting: "African art? Never heard of it!" (L'art nègre? Connais pas!), this is belied by his deep interest in the African sculptures owned by Matisse and his close friend Guiliaume Apollinaire. Since none of the African masks once thought to have influenced Picasso in this painting were available in Paris at the time work was painted, he is thought now to have studied African mask forms in an illustrated volume by anthropologist Leo Frobenius. Primitivism continues in his work during, before and after the painting of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, from spring 1906 through the spring of 1907. Influences from ancient Iberian sculpture are also important. Some Iberian reliefs from Osuna, then only recently excavated, were on display in the Louvre from 1904. Archaic Greek sculpture has also been claimed as an influence.Contentions about the influence of African sculpture were fueled in 1939 when Alfred Barr said the primitivism of the Demoiselles derived from the art of Côte d'Ivoire and the French Congo. Picasso subsequently insisted his catalogue raissonne’s editor Christian Zervos publish a disclaimer in which Picasso certified that he was not aware of African art until after Demoiselles was completed, but that he had instead drawn from Iberian art he had seen a year or so earlier, in particular from the Louvre’s Osuna reliefs. Contradictingly, in 1944 Picasso recounted seeing African art and being greatly moved by it during Demoiselles’  creation, adding that the experience was revelatory and a pivotal moment in the painting’s formulation. To Andre Malraux he said the revelations of African sculpture came to him from visiting to the Ethnographic Museum of the Trocadero. As Picasso recalled, "When I went to the Trocadero, it was disgusting. The flea market, the smell. I was all alone. I wanted to get away, but I didn't leave. I stayed, I stayed. I understood that it was very important. Something was happening to me, right. The masks weren't like any other pieces of sculpture, not at all. They were magic things." Maurice de Vlaminck is often credited with introducing Picasso to African sculpture of Fang extraction in 1904.Picasso biographer John Richardson recounts in A Life of Picasso, The Cubist Rebel 1907–1916 art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler's recollection of his first visit to Picasso's studio in July 1907. Kahnweiler remembers seeing "dusty stacks of canvases" in Picasso's studio and "African sculptures of majestic severity". Richardson comments: "so much for Picasso's story that he was not yet aware of Tribal art.'" A photograph of Picasso in his studio surrounded by African sculptures c.1908, is found on page 27 of that same volume.Suzanne Preston Blier says that, like Gauguin and several other artists in this era, Picasso used illustrated books for many of his preliminary studies for this painting. In addition to the Frobenius book, his sources included a 1906 publication of a twelfth-century Medieval art manuscript on architectural sculpture by Villiard de Honnecourt and a book by Carl Heinrich Stratz of pseudo-pornography showing photos and drawings of women from around the world organized to evoke ideas of human origins and evolution. Blier suggests that this helps account for the diversity of styles Picasso employed in his image-filled sketchbooks for this painting. These books, and other sources such as cartoons, Blier writes, also offer hints as to the larger meaning of this painting.

Pablo Picasso, ''Nu aux bras levés (Nude),'' 1907

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Femme nue'', oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano

An illustration from Jouffret's ''Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions''. The book, which influenced Picasso, was given to him by Princet.

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure upper right).jpg

Category:Paintings in the Museum of Modern Art (New York City)

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Nu à la serviette'', oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery), oil on canvas, 61.4 x 47.6 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.jpg

File:Le Grand Baigneur, par Paul Cézanne, Yorck.jpg

File:Jacques Doucet's hôtel particulier, 33 rue Saint-James, Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1929 photograph Pierre Legrain.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Femme nue, oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano.jpg

File:Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika. Table II..jpg

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the lower right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure lower right).jpg

The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope

Pablo Picasso, ''Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery)'', 1907, oil on canvas, 61.4 × 47.6 cm, The [[Museum of Modern Art

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the upper right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu à la serviette, oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu aux bras levés (Nude).jpg

Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 book ''Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika''


Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Prompt: Describe the characteristics of the African and Iberian art in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon's Influences.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, Europe's colonization of Africa led to many economic, social, political, and even artistic encounters. From these encounters, Western visual artists became increasingly interested in the unique forms of African art, particularly masks from the Niger-Congo region. In an essay by Dennis Duerden, author of African Art (1968), The Invisible Present (1972), and a former director of the BBC World Service, the mask is defined as "very often a complete head-dress and not just that part that conceals the face". This form of visual art and image appealed to Western visual artists, leading to what Duerden calls the "discovery" of African art by Western practitioners, including Picasso.The stylistic sources for the heads of the women and their degree of influence has been much discussed and debated, in particular the influence of African tribal masks, art of Oceania, and pre-Roman Iberian sculptures. The rounded contours of the features of the three women to the left can be related to Iberian sculpture, but not obviously the fragmented planes of the two on the right, which indeed seem influenced by African masks. Lawrence Weschler says that, in many ways, much of the moldering cultural and even scientific ferment that characterized the first decade and a half of the twentieth century and that laid the foundations for much of what we today consider modern can be traced back to ways in which Europe was already wrestling with its bad-faith, often strenuously repressed, knowledge of what it had been doing in Africa. The example of Picasso virtually launching cubism with his 1907 Desmoiselles d’Avignon, in response to the sorts of African masks and other colonial booty he was encountering in Paris’s Musee de l’Homme, is obvious.Private collections and illustrated books featuring African art in this period were also important. While Picasso emphatically denied the influence of African masks on the painting: "African art? Never heard of it!" (L'art nègre? Connais pas!), this is belied by his deep interest in the African sculptures owned by Matisse and his close friend Guiliaume Apollinaire. Since none of the African masks once thought to have influenced Picasso in this painting were available in Paris at the time work was painted, he is thought now to have studied African mask forms in an illustrated volume by anthropologist Leo Frobenius. Primitivism continues in his work during, before and after the painting of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, from spring 1906 through the spring of 1907. Influences from ancient Iberian sculpture are also important. Some Iberian reliefs from Osuna, then only recently excavated, were on display in the Louvre from 1904. Archaic Greek sculpture has also been claimed as an influence.Contentions about the influence of African sculpture were fueled in 1939 when Alfred Barr said the primitivism of the Demoiselles derived from the art of Côte d'Ivoire and the French Congo. Picasso subsequently insisted his catalogue raissonne’s editor Christian Zervos publish a disclaimer in which Picasso certified that he was not aware of African art until after Demoiselles was completed, but that he had instead drawn from Iberian art he had seen a year or so earlier, in particular from the Louvre’s Osuna reliefs. Contradictingly, in 1944 Picasso recounted seeing African art and being greatly moved by it during Demoiselles’  creation, adding that the experience was revelatory and a pivotal moment in the painting’s formulation. To Andre Malraux he said the revelations of African sculpture came to him from visiting to the Ethnographic Museum of the Trocadero. As Picasso recalled, "When I went to the Trocadero, it was disgusting. The flea market, the smell. I was all alone. I wanted to get away, but I didn't leave. I stayed, I stayed. I understood that it was very important. Something was happening to me, right. The masks weren't like any other pieces of sculpture, not at all. They were magic things." Maurice de Vlaminck is often credited with introducing Picasso to African sculpture of Fang extraction in 1904.Picasso biographer John Richardson recounts in A Life of Picasso, The Cubist Rebel 1907–1916 art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler's recollection of his first visit to Picasso's studio in July 1907. Kahnweiler remembers seeing "dusty stacks of canvases" in Picasso's studio and "African sculptures of majestic severity". Richardson comments: "so much for Picasso's story that he was not yet aware of Tribal art.'" A photograph of Picasso in his studio surrounded by African sculptures c.1908, is found on page 27 of that same volume.Suzanne Preston Blier says that, like Gauguin and several other artists in this era, Picasso used illustrated books for many of his preliminary studies for this painting. In addition to the Frobenius book, his sources included a 1906 publication of a twelfth-century Medieval art manuscript on architectural sculpture by Villiard de Honnecourt and a book by Carl Heinrich Stratz of pseudo-pornography showing photos and drawings of women from around the world organized to evoke ideas of human origins and evolution. Blier suggests that this helps account for the diversity of styles Picasso employed in his image-filled sketchbooks for this painting. These books, and other sources such as cartoons, Blier writes, also offer hints as to the larger meaning of this painting.

Pablo Picasso, ''Nu aux bras levés (Nude),'' 1907

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Femme nue'', oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano

An illustration from Jouffret's ''Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions''. The book, which influenced Picasso, was given to him by Princet.

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure upper right).jpg

Category:Paintings in the Museum of Modern Art (New York City)

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Nu à la serviette'', oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery), oil on canvas, 61.4 x 47.6 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.jpg

File:Le Grand Baigneur, par Paul Cézanne, Yorck.jpg

File:Jacques Doucet's hôtel particulier, 33 rue Saint-James, Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1929 photograph Pierre Legrain.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Femme nue, oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano.jpg

File:Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika. Table II..jpg

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the lower right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure lower right).jpg

The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope

Pablo Picasso, ''Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery)'', 1907, oil on canvas, 61.4 × 47.6 cm, The [[Museum of Modern Art

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the upper right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu à la serviette, oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu aux bras levés (Nude).jpg

Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 book ''Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika''


Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Prompt: In the context of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, explain the Mathematics and the Influences.

Maurice Princet, a French mathematician and actuary, played a role in the birth of Cubism as an associate of Pablo Picasso, Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Jean Metzinger, Robert Delaunay, Juan Gris and later Marcel Duchamp. Princet became known as "le mathématicien du cubisme" ("the mathematician of cubism").Princet is credited with introducing the work of Henri Poincaré and the concept of the "fourth dimension" to artists at the Bateau-Lavoir. Princet brought to the attention of Picasso, Metzinger and others, a book by Esprit Jouffret, Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions (Elementary Treatise on the Geometry of Four Dimensions, 1903), a popularization of Poincaré's Science and Hypothesis in which Jouffret described hypercubes and other complex polyhedra in four dimensions and projected them onto the two-dimensional surface. Picasso's sketchbooks for Les Demoiselles d'Avignon illustrate Jouffret's influence on the artist's work.

Pablo Picasso, ''Nu aux bras levés (Nude),'' 1907

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Femme nue'', oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano

An illustration from Jouffret's ''Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions''. The book, which influenced Picasso, was given to him by Princet.

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure upper right).jpg

Category:Paintings in the Museum of Modern Art (New York City)

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Nu à la serviette'', oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery), oil on canvas, 61.4 x 47.6 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.jpg

File:Le Grand Baigneur, par Paul Cézanne, Yorck.jpg

File:Jacques Doucet's hôtel particulier, 33 rue Saint-James, Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1929 photograph Pierre Legrain.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Femme nue, oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano.jpg

File:Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika. Table II..jpg

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the lower right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure lower right).jpg

The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope

Pablo Picasso, ''Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery)'', 1907, oil on canvas, 61.4 × 47.6 cm, The [[Museum of Modern Art

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the upper right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu à la serviette, oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu aux bras levés (Nude).jpg

Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 book ''Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika''


Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Prompt: Explain the Mathematics about the Influences of this artwork, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

Maurice Princet, a French mathematician and actuary, played a role in the birth of Cubism as an associate of Pablo Picasso, Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Jean Metzinger, Robert Delaunay, Juan Gris and later Marcel Duchamp. Princet became known as "le mathématicien du cubisme" ("the mathematician of cubism").Princet is credited with introducing the work of Henri Poincaré and the concept of the "fourth dimension" to artists at the Bateau-Lavoir. Princet brought to the attention of Picasso, Metzinger and others, a book by Esprit Jouffret, Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions (Elementary Treatise on the Geometry of Four Dimensions, 1903), a popularization of Poincaré's Science and Hypothesis in which Jouffret described hypercubes and other complex polyhedra in four dimensions and projected them onto the two-dimensional surface. Picasso's sketchbooks for Les Demoiselles d'Avignon illustrate Jouffret's influence on the artist's work.

Pablo Picasso, ''Nu aux bras levés (Nude),'' 1907

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Femme nue'', oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano

An illustration from Jouffret's ''Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions''. The book, which influenced Picasso, was given to him by Princet.

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure upper right).jpg

Category:Paintings in the Museum of Modern Art (New York City)

Pablo Picasso, 1907, ''Nu à la serviette'', oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery), oil on canvas, 61.4 x 47.6 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.jpg

File:Le Grand Baigneur, par Paul Cézanne, Yorck.jpg

File:Jacques Doucet's hôtel particulier, 33 rue Saint-James, Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1929 photograph Pierre Legrain.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Femme nue, oil on canvas, 92 x 43 cm, Museo delle Culture, Milano.jpg

File:Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika. Table II..jpg

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the lower right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (detail, figure lower right).jpg

The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope

Pablo Picasso, ''Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery)'', 1907, oil on canvas, 61.4 × 47.6 cm, The [[Museum of Modern Art

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon}}, detail of the figure to the upper right

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu à la serviette, oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm.jpg

File:Pablo Picasso, 1907, Nu aux bras levés (Nude).jpg

Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 book ''Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika''