Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

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

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: Describe the characteristics of the Mathematics in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon's 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: Focus on Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and explain the Impact.

Although Les Demoiselles had an enormous and profound influence on modern art, its impact was not immediate, and the painting stayed in Picasso's studio for many years. At first, only Picasso's intimate circle of artists, dealers, collectors and friends were aware of the work. Soon after the late summer of 1907, Picasso and his long-time lover Fernande Olivier (1881–1966) separated. The re-painting of the two heads on the far right of Les Demoiselles fueled speculation that it was an indication of the split between Picasso and Olivier. Although they later reunited for a period, the relationship ended in 1912.A photograph of the Les Demoiselles was first published in an article by Gelett Burgess entitled "The Wild Men of Paris, Matisse, Picasso and Les Fauves", The Architectural Record, May 1910.Les Demoiselles would not be exhibited until 1916, and not widely recognized as a revolutionary achievement until the early 1920s, when André Breton (1896–1966) published the work. The painting was reproduced again in Cahiers d'art (1927), within an article dedicated to African art.Richardson goes on to say that Matisse was irate upon seeing the Demoiselles at Picasso's studio. He let it be known that he regarded the painting as an attempt to ridicule the modern movement; he was outraged to find his sensational Blue Nude, not to speak of Bonheur de vivre, overtaken by Picasso's "hideous" whores. He vowed to get even and make Picasso beg for mercy. Just as the Bonheur de vivre had fueled Picasso's competitiveness, Les Demoiselles now fueled Matisse's.Among Picasso's closed circle of friends and colleagues there was a mixture of opinions about Les Demoiselles. Georges Braque and André Derain were both initially troubled by it although they were supportive of Picasso. According to William Rubin, two of Picasso's friends, the art critic André Salmon and the painter Ardengo Soffici (1879–1964), were enthusiastic about it while Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) was not. Both the art dealer-collector Wilhelm Uhde (1874–1947), and Kahnweiler were more enthusiastic about the painting however.According to Kahnweiler Les Demoiselles was the beginning of Cubism. He writes:Early in 1907 Picasso began a strange large painting depicting women, fruit and drapery, which he left unfinished. It cannot be called other than unfinished, even though it represents a long period of work. Begun in the spirit of the works of 1906, it contains in one section the endeavors of 1907 and thus never constitutes a unified whole.The nudes, with large, quiet eyes, stand rigid, like mannequins. Their stiff, round bodies are flesh-colored, black and white. That is the style of 1906.In the foreground, however, alien to the style of the rest of the painting, appear a crouching figure and a bowl of fruit. These forms are drawn angularly, not roundly modeled in chiaroscuro. The colors are luscious blue, strident yellow, next to pure black and white. This is the beginning of Cubism, the first upsurge, a desperate titanic clash with all of the problems at once.

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 Impact of this artwork, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

Although Les Demoiselles had an enormous and profound influence on modern art, its impact was not immediate, and the painting stayed in Picasso's studio for many years. At first, only Picasso's intimate circle of artists, dealers, collectors and friends were aware of the work. Soon after the late summer of 1907, Picasso and his long-time lover Fernande Olivier (1881–1966) separated. The re-painting of the two heads on the far right of Les Demoiselles fueled speculation that it was an indication of the split between Picasso and Olivier. Although they later reunited for a period, the relationship ended in 1912.A photograph of the Les Demoiselles was first published in an article by Gelett Burgess entitled "The Wild Men of Paris, Matisse, Picasso and Les Fauves", The Architectural Record, May 1910.Les Demoiselles would not be exhibited until 1916, and not widely recognized as a revolutionary achievement until the early 1920s, when André Breton (1896–1966) published the work. The painting was reproduced again in Cahiers d'art (1927), within an article dedicated to African art.Richardson goes on to say that Matisse was irate upon seeing the Demoiselles at Picasso's studio. He let it be known that he regarded the painting as an attempt to ridicule the modern movement; he was outraged to find his sensational Blue Nude, not to speak of Bonheur de vivre, overtaken by Picasso's "hideous" whores. He vowed to get even and make Picasso beg for mercy. Just as the Bonheur de vivre had fueled Picasso's competitiveness, Les Demoiselles now fueled Matisse's.Among Picasso's closed circle of friends and colleagues there was a mixture of opinions about Les Demoiselles. Georges Braque and André Derain were both initially troubled by it although they were supportive of Picasso. According to William Rubin, two of Picasso's friends, the art critic André Salmon and the painter Ardengo Soffici (1879–1964), were enthusiastic about it while Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) was not. Both the art dealer-collector Wilhelm Uhde (1874–1947), and Kahnweiler were more enthusiastic about the painting however.According to Kahnweiler Les Demoiselles was the beginning of Cubism. He writes:Early in 1907 Picasso began a strange large painting depicting women, fruit and drapery, which he left unfinished. It cannot be called other than unfinished, even though it represents a long period of work. Begun in the spirit of the works of 1906, it contains in one section the endeavors of 1907 and thus never constitutes a unified whole.The nudes, with large, quiet eyes, stand rigid, like mannequins. Their stiff, round bodies are flesh-colored, black and white. That is the style of 1906.In the foreground, however, alien to the style of the rest of the painting, appear a crouching figure and a bowl of fruit. These forms are drawn angularly, not roundly modeled in chiaroscuro. The colors are luscious blue, strident yellow, next to pure black and white. This is the beginning of Cubism, the first upsurge, a desperate titanic clash with all of the problems at once.

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 Impact?

Although Les Demoiselles had an enormous and profound influence on modern art, its impact was not immediate, and the painting stayed in Picasso's studio for many years. At first, only Picasso's intimate circle of artists, dealers, collectors and friends were aware of the work. Soon after the late summer of 1907, Picasso and his long-time lover Fernande Olivier (1881–1966) separated. The re-painting of the two heads on the far right of Les Demoiselles fueled speculation that it was an indication of the split between Picasso and Olivier. Although they later reunited for a period, the relationship ended in 1912.A photograph of the Les Demoiselles was first published in an article by Gelett Burgess entitled "The Wild Men of Paris, Matisse, Picasso and Les Fauves", The Architectural Record, May 1910.Les Demoiselles would not be exhibited until 1916, and not widely recognized as a revolutionary achievement until the early 1920s, when André Breton (1896–1966) published the work. The painting was reproduced again in Cahiers d'art (1927), within an article dedicated to African art.Richardson goes on to say that Matisse was irate upon seeing the Demoiselles at Picasso's studio. He let it be known that he regarded the painting as an attempt to ridicule the modern movement; he was outraged to find his sensational Blue Nude, not to speak of Bonheur de vivre, overtaken by Picasso's "hideous" whores. He vowed to get even and make Picasso beg for mercy. Just as the Bonheur de vivre had fueled Picasso's competitiveness, Les Demoiselles now fueled Matisse's.Among Picasso's closed circle of friends and colleagues there was a mixture of opinions about Les Demoiselles. Georges Braque and André Derain were both initially troubled by it although they were supportive of Picasso. According to William Rubin, two of Picasso's friends, the art critic André Salmon and the painter Ardengo Soffici (1879–1964), were enthusiastic about it while Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) was not. Both the art dealer-collector Wilhelm Uhde (1874–1947), and Kahnweiler were more enthusiastic about the painting however.According to Kahnweiler Les Demoiselles was the beginning of Cubism. He writes:Early in 1907 Picasso began a strange large painting depicting women, fruit and drapery, which he left unfinished. It cannot be called other than unfinished, even though it represents a long period of work. Begun in the spirit of the works of 1906, it contains in one section the endeavors of 1907 and thus never constitutes a unified whole.The nudes, with large, quiet eyes, stand rigid, like mannequins. Their stiff, round bodies are flesh-colored, black and white. That is the style of 1906.In the foreground, however, alien to the style of the rest of the painting, appear a crouching figure and a bowl of fruit. These forms are drawn angularly, not roundly modeled in chiaroscuro. The colors are luscious blue, strident yellow, next to pure black and white. This is the beginning of Cubism, the first upsurge, a desperate titanic clash with all of the problems at once.

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 Impact discussed?

Although Les Demoiselles had an enormous and profound influence on modern art, its impact was not immediate, and the painting stayed in Picasso's studio for many years. At first, only Picasso's intimate circle of artists, dealers, collectors and friends were aware of the work. Soon after the late summer of 1907, Picasso and his long-time lover Fernande Olivier (1881–1966) separated. The re-painting of the two heads on the far right of Les Demoiselles fueled speculation that it was an indication of the split between Picasso and Olivier. Although they later reunited for a period, the relationship ended in 1912.A photograph of the Les Demoiselles was first published in an article by Gelett Burgess entitled "The Wild Men of Paris, Matisse, Picasso and Les Fauves", The Architectural Record, May 1910.Les Demoiselles would not be exhibited until 1916, and not widely recognized as a revolutionary achievement until the early 1920s, when André Breton (1896–1966) published the work. The painting was reproduced again in Cahiers d'art (1927), within an article dedicated to African art.Richardson goes on to say that Matisse was irate upon seeing the Demoiselles at Picasso's studio. He let it be known that he regarded the painting as an attempt to ridicule the modern movement; he was outraged to find his sensational Blue Nude, not to speak of Bonheur de vivre, overtaken by Picasso's "hideous" whores. He vowed to get even and make Picasso beg for mercy. Just as the Bonheur de vivre had fueled Picasso's competitiveness, Les Demoiselles now fueled Matisse's.Among Picasso's closed circle of friends and colleagues there was a mixture of opinions about Les Demoiselles. Georges Braque and André Derain were both initially troubled by it although they were supportive of Picasso. According to William Rubin, two of Picasso's friends, the art critic André Salmon and the painter Ardengo Soffici (1879–1964), were enthusiastic about it while Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) was not. Both the art dealer-collector Wilhelm Uhde (1874–1947), and Kahnweiler were more enthusiastic about the painting however.According to Kahnweiler Les Demoiselles was the beginning of Cubism. He writes:Early in 1907 Picasso began a strange large painting depicting women, fruit and drapery, which he left unfinished. It cannot be called other than unfinished, even though it represents a long period of work. Begun in the spirit of the works of 1906, it contains in one section the endeavors of 1907 and thus never constitutes a unified whole.The nudes, with large, quiet eyes, stand rigid, like mannequins. Their stiff, round bodies are flesh-colored, black and white. That is the style of 1906.In the foreground, however, alien to the style of the rest of the painting, appear a crouching figure and a bowl of fruit. These forms are drawn angularly, not roundly modeled in chiaroscuro. The colors are luscious blue, strident yellow, next to pure black and white. This is the beginning of Cubism, the first upsurge, a desperate titanic clash with all of the problems at once.

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: Focus on Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and explain the Public view and title.

From 16 to 31 July 1916 Les Demoiselles was exhibited to the public for the first time at the Salon d'Antin, an exhibition organized by André Salmon titled L'Art moderne en France. The exhibition space at 26 rue d'Antin was lent by the famous couturier and art collector Paul Poiret. The larger Salon d'Automne and Salon des Indépendants had been closed due to World War I, making this the only Cubists' exhibition in France since 1914. On 23 July 1916 a review was published in Le Cri de Paris:The Cubists are not waiting for the war to end to recommence hostilities against good sense. They are exhibiting at the Galerie Poiret naked women whose scattered parts are represented in all four corners of the canvas: here an eye, there an ear, over there a hand, a foot on top, a mouth below. M. Picasso, their leader, is possibly the least disheveled of the lot. He has painted, or rather daubed, five women who are, if the truth be told, all hacked up, and yet their limbs somehow manage to hold together. They have, moreover, piggish faces with eyes wandering negligently above their ears. An enthusiastic art-lover offered the artist 20,000 francs for this masterpiece. M. Picasso wanted more. The art-lover did not insist.Picasso referred to his only entry at the Salon d'Antin as his Brothel painting calling it Le Bordel d'Avignon but André Salmon who had originally labeled the work, Le Bordel Philosophique, retitled it Les Demoiselles d'Avignon so as to lessen its scandalous impact on the public. Picasso never liked the title, however, preferring "las chicas de Avignon", but Salmon's title stuck. Leo Steinberg labels his essays on the painting after its original title. According to Suzanne Preston Blier, the word bordel in the painting's title, rather than evoking a house of prostitution (une maison close) instead more accurately references in French a complex situation or mess. This painting, Blier says, explores not prostitution per se, but instead sex and motherhood more generally, along with the complexities of evolution in the colonial multi-racial world. The name Avignon, scholars argue, not only references the street where Picasso once bought his paint supplies (which had a few brothels), but also the home of Max Jacob's grandmother, whom Picasso jocularly identifies as one of the painting's diverse modern day subjects.The only other time the painting might have been exhibited to the public prior to a 1937 showing in New York was in 1918, in an exhibition dedicated to Picasso and Matisse at Galerie Paul Guillaume in Paris, though very little information exists about this exhibition or the presence (if at all) of Les Demoiselles.Afterwards, the painting was rolled up and remained with Picasso until 1924 when, with urging and help from Breton and Louis Aragon (1897–1982), he sold it to designer Jacques Doucet (1853–1929), for 25,000 francs.Between September 1984 and January 1985, Les Demoiselles was displayed in an exhibition entitled "Primitivism" in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.  The exhibition displayed modern pieces by artists such as Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin and Pablo Picasso alongside artifacts from tribal groups from Africa, Oceania and North America in order to reveal how modern artists have interpreted tribal art. The display of this painting among African tribal masks was intended to correlate the masks as the inspiration for the features Picasso painted on the women in Les Demoiselles.The exhibition's catalogue states that the pejorative ethnographic and political connotations of ‘primitivism’ were not the lens of the exhibition’s curation. Nevertheless, the exhibition was controversial, as some critics believed it exemplified western intrigue with the ‘different’ and the harmful notion that Western culture is the modern and ‘ideal’ future. The museum's attempt to remove the implication of the title's vocabulary was critiqued as false innocence by critics who said the exhibition framed tribal culture as foreign and 'different' symbolism and treated tribal objects solely a part of history whose only modern purpose is to serve artistic interpretation.

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 Public view and title of this artwork, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

From 16 to 31 July 1916 Les Demoiselles was exhibited to the public for the first time at the Salon d'Antin, an exhibition organized by André Salmon titled L'Art moderne en France. The exhibition space at 26 rue d'Antin was lent by the famous couturier and art collector Paul Poiret. The larger Salon d'Automne and Salon des Indépendants had been closed due to World War I, making this the only Cubists' exhibition in France since 1914. On 23 July 1916 a review was published in Le Cri de Paris:The Cubists are not waiting for the war to end to recommence hostilities against good sense. They are exhibiting at the Galerie Poiret naked women whose scattered parts are represented in all four corners of the canvas: here an eye, there an ear, over there a hand, a foot on top, a mouth below. M. Picasso, their leader, is possibly the least disheveled of the lot. He has painted, or rather daubed, five women who are, if the truth be told, all hacked up, and yet their limbs somehow manage to hold together. They have, moreover, piggish faces with eyes wandering negligently above their ears. An enthusiastic art-lover offered the artist 20,000 francs for this masterpiece. M. Picasso wanted more. The art-lover did not insist.Picasso referred to his only entry at the Salon d'Antin as his Brothel painting calling it Le Bordel d'Avignon but André Salmon who had originally labeled the work, Le Bordel Philosophique, retitled it Les Demoiselles d'Avignon so as to lessen its scandalous impact on the public. Picasso never liked the title, however, preferring "las chicas de Avignon", but Salmon's title stuck. Leo Steinberg labels his essays on the painting after its original title. According to Suzanne Preston Blier, the word bordel in the painting's title, rather than evoking a house of prostitution (une maison close) instead more accurately references in French a complex situation or mess. This painting, Blier says, explores not prostitution per se, but instead sex and motherhood more generally, along with the complexities of evolution in the colonial multi-racial world. The name Avignon, scholars argue, not only references the street where Picasso once bought his paint supplies (which had a few brothels), but also the home of Max Jacob's grandmother, whom Picasso jocularly identifies as one of the painting's diverse modern day subjects.The only other time the painting might have been exhibited to the public prior to a 1937 showing in New York was in 1918, in an exhibition dedicated to Picasso and Matisse at Galerie Paul Guillaume in Paris, though very little information exists about this exhibition or the presence (if at all) of Les Demoiselles.Afterwards, the painting was rolled up and remained with Picasso until 1924 when, with urging and help from Breton and Louis Aragon (1897–1982), he sold it to designer Jacques Doucet (1853–1929), for 25,000 francs.Between September 1984 and January 1985, Les Demoiselles was displayed in an exhibition entitled "Primitivism" in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.  The exhibition displayed modern pieces by artists such as Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin and Pablo Picasso alongside artifacts from tribal groups from Africa, Oceania and North America in order to reveal how modern artists have interpreted tribal art. The display of this painting among African tribal masks was intended to correlate the masks as the inspiration for the features Picasso painted on the women in Les Demoiselles.The exhibition's catalogue states that the pejorative ethnographic and political connotations of ‘primitivism’ were not the lens of the exhibition’s curation. Nevertheless, the exhibition was controversial, as some critics believed it exemplified western intrigue with the ‘different’ and the harmful notion that Western culture is the modern and ‘ideal’ future. The museum's attempt to remove the implication of the title's vocabulary was critiqued as false innocence by critics who said the exhibition framed tribal culture as foreign and 'different' symbolism and treated tribal objects solely a part of history whose only modern purpose is to serve artistic interpretation.

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 Public view and title?

From 16 to 31 July 1916 Les Demoiselles was exhibited to the public for the first time at the Salon d'Antin, an exhibition organized by André Salmon titled L'Art moderne en France. The exhibition space at 26 rue d'Antin was lent by the famous couturier and art collector Paul Poiret. The larger Salon d'Automne and Salon des Indépendants had been closed due to World War I, making this the only Cubists' exhibition in France since 1914. On 23 July 1916 a review was published in Le Cri de Paris:The Cubists are not waiting for the war to end to recommence hostilities against good sense. They are exhibiting at the Galerie Poiret naked women whose scattered parts are represented in all four corners of the canvas: here an eye, there an ear, over there a hand, a foot on top, a mouth below. M. Picasso, their leader, is possibly the least disheveled of the lot. He has painted, or rather daubed, five women who are, if the truth be told, all hacked up, and yet their limbs somehow manage to hold together. They have, moreover, piggish faces with eyes wandering negligently above their ears. An enthusiastic art-lover offered the artist 20,000 francs for this masterpiece. M. Picasso wanted more. The art-lover did not insist.Picasso referred to his only entry at the Salon d'Antin as his Brothel painting calling it Le Bordel d'Avignon but André Salmon who had originally labeled the work, Le Bordel Philosophique, retitled it Les Demoiselles d'Avignon so as to lessen its scandalous impact on the public. Picasso never liked the title, however, preferring "las chicas de Avignon", but Salmon's title stuck. Leo Steinberg labels his essays on the painting after its original title. According to Suzanne Preston Blier, the word bordel in the painting's title, rather than evoking a house of prostitution (une maison close) instead more accurately references in French a complex situation or mess. This painting, Blier says, explores not prostitution per se, but instead sex and motherhood more generally, along with the complexities of evolution in the colonial multi-racial world. The name Avignon, scholars argue, not only references the street where Picasso once bought his paint supplies (which had a few brothels), but also the home of Max Jacob's grandmother, whom Picasso jocularly identifies as one of the painting's diverse modern day subjects.The only other time the painting might have been exhibited to the public prior to a 1937 showing in New York was in 1918, in an exhibition dedicated to Picasso and Matisse at Galerie Paul Guillaume in Paris, though very little information exists about this exhibition or the presence (if at all) of Les Demoiselles.Afterwards, the painting was rolled up and remained with Picasso until 1924 when, with urging and help from Breton and Louis Aragon (1897–1982), he sold it to designer Jacques Doucet (1853–1929), for 25,000 francs.Between September 1984 and January 1985, Les Demoiselles was displayed in an exhibition entitled "Primitivism" in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.  The exhibition displayed modern pieces by artists such as Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin and Pablo Picasso alongside artifacts from tribal groups from Africa, Oceania and North America in order to reveal how modern artists have interpreted tribal art. The display of this painting among African tribal masks was intended to correlate the masks as the inspiration for the features Picasso painted on the women in Les Demoiselles.The exhibition's catalogue states that the pejorative ethnographic and political connotations of ‘primitivism’ were not the lens of the exhibition’s curation. Nevertheless, the exhibition was controversial, as some critics believed it exemplified western intrigue with the ‘different’ and the harmful notion that Western culture is the modern and ‘ideal’ future. The museum's attempt to remove the implication of the title's vocabulary was critiqued as false innocence by critics who said the exhibition framed tribal culture as foreign and 'different' symbolism and treated tribal objects solely a part of history whose only modern purpose is to serve artistic interpretation.

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 Public view and title discussed?

From 16 to 31 July 1916 Les Demoiselles was exhibited to the public for the first time at the Salon d'Antin, an exhibition organized by André Salmon titled L'Art moderne en France. The exhibition space at 26 rue d'Antin was lent by the famous couturier and art collector Paul Poiret. The larger Salon d'Automne and Salon des Indépendants had been closed due to World War I, making this the only Cubists' exhibition in France since 1914. On 23 July 1916 a review was published in Le Cri de Paris:The Cubists are not waiting for the war to end to recommence hostilities against good sense. They are exhibiting at the Galerie Poiret naked women whose scattered parts are represented in all four corners of the canvas: here an eye, there an ear, over there a hand, a foot on top, a mouth below. M. Picasso, their leader, is possibly the least disheveled of the lot. He has painted, or rather daubed, five women who are, if the truth be told, all hacked up, and yet their limbs somehow manage to hold together. They have, moreover, piggish faces with eyes wandering negligently above their ears. An enthusiastic art-lover offered the artist 20,000 francs for this masterpiece. M. Picasso wanted more. The art-lover did not insist.Picasso referred to his only entry at the Salon d'Antin as his Brothel painting calling it Le Bordel d'Avignon but André Salmon who had originally labeled the work, Le Bordel Philosophique, retitled it Les Demoiselles d'Avignon so as to lessen its scandalous impact on the public. Picasso never liked the title, however, preferring "las chicas de Avignon", but Salmon's title stuck. Leo Steinberg labels his essays on the painting after its original title. According to Suzanne Preston Blier, the word bordel in the painting's title, rather than evoking a house of prostitution (une maison close) instead more accurately references in French a complex situation or mess. This painting, Blier says, explores not prostitution per se, but instead sex and motherhood more generally, along with the complexities of evolution in the colonial multi-racial world. The name Avignon, scholars argue, not only references the street where Picasso once bought his paint supplies (which had a few brothels), but also the home of Max Jacob's grandmother, whom Picasso jocularly identifies as one of the painting's diverse modern day subjects.The only other time the painting might have been exhibited to the public prior to a 1937 showing in New York was in 1918, in an exhibition dedicated to Picasso and Matisse at Galerie Paul Guillaume in Paris, though very little information exists about this exhibition or the presence (if at all) of Les Demoiselles.Afterwards, the painting was rolled up and remained with Picasso until 1924 when, with urging and help from Breton and Louis Aragon (1897–1982), he sold it to designer Jacques Doucet (1853–1929), for 25,000 francs.Between September 1984 and January 1985, Les Demoiselles was displayed in an exhibition entitled "Primitivism" in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.  The exhibition displayed modern pieces by artists such as Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin and Pablo Picasso alongside artifacts from tribal groups from Africa, Oceania and North America in order to reveal how modern artists have interpreted tribal art. The display of this painting among African tribal masks was intended to correlate the masks as the inspiration for the features Picasso painted on the women in Les Demoiselles.The exhibition's catalogue states that the pejorative ethnographic and political connotations of ‘primitivism’ were not the lens of the exhibition’s curation. Nevertheless, the exhibition was controversial, as some critics believed it exemplified western intrigue with the ‘different’ and the harmful notion that Western culture is the modern and ‘ideal’ future. The museum's attempt to remove the implication of the title's vocabulary was critiqued as false innocence by critics who said the exhibition framed tribal culture as foreign and 'different' symbolism and treated tribal objects solely a part of history whose only modern purpose is to serve artistic interpretation.

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: Focus on Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and explain the Interpretation.

Picasso drew each of the figures in Les Demoiselles differently. The woman pulling the curtain on the upper right is rendered with heavy paint. Composed of sharp geometric shapes, her head is the most strictly Cubist of all five. The curtain seems to blend partially into her body. The Cubist head of the crouching figure (lower right) underwent at least two revisions from an Iberian figure to its current state. She also seems to have been drawn from two different perspectives at once, creating a confusing, twisted figure. The woman above her is rather manly, with a dark face and square chest. The whole picture is in a two-dimensional style, with an abandoned perspective.Much of the critical debate that has taken place over the years centers on attempting to account for this multiplicity of styles within the work. The dominant understanding for over five decades, espoused most notably by Alfred Barr, the first director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and organizer of major career retrospectives for the artist, has been that it can be interpreted as evidence of a transitional period in Picasso's art, an effort to connect his earlier work to Cubism, the style he would help invent and develop over the next five or six years. Suzanne Preston Blier says that the divergent styles of the painting were added intentionally to convey to each women art "style" attributes from the five geographic areas each woman represents.Art critic John Berger, in his controversial 1965 biography The Success and Failure of Picasso, interprets Les Demoiselles d'Avignon as the provocation that led to Cubism:Blunted by the insolence of so much recent art, we probably tend to underestimate the brutality of the Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. All his friends who saw it in his studio were at first shocked by it. And it was meant to shock…A brothel may not in itself be shocking. But women painted without charm or sadness, without irony or social comment, women painted like the palings of a stockade through eyes that look out as if at death – that is shocking. And equally the method of painting. Picasso himself has said that he was influenced at the time by archaic Spanish (Iberian) sculpture. He was also influenced – particularly in the two heads at the right – by African masks…here it seems that Picasso's quotations are simple, direct, and emotional. He is not in the least concerned with formal problems. The dislocations in this picture are the result of aggression, not aesthetics; it is the nearest you can get in a painting to an outrage…I emphasize the violent and iconoclastic aspect of this painting because it is usually enshrined as the great formal exercise which was the starting point of Cubism. It was the starting point of Cubism, in so far as it prompted Braque to begin painting at the end of the year his own far more formal answer to Les Demoiselles d'Avignon…yet if he had been left to himself, this picture would never have led Picasso to Cubism or to any way of painting remotely resembling it…It has nothing to do with that twentieth-century vision of the future which was the essence of Cubism.Yet it did provoke the beginning of the great period of exception in Picasso's life. Nobody can know exactly how the change began inside Picasso. We can only note the results. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, unlike any previous painting by Picasso, offers no evidence of skill. On the contrary, it is clumsy, overworked, unfinished. It is as though his fury in painting it was so great that it destroyed his gifts…By painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon Picasso provoked Cubism. It was the spontaneous and, as always, primitive insurrection out of which, for good historical reasons, the revolution of Cubism developed.Art historian and professor Anna C. Chave agrees with Berger that Les Demoiselles d'Avignon can be taken as the catalyst for the style of Cubism in her 1994 article, New Encounters with Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon: Gender, Race, and the Origins of Cubism. Chave also gives an interesting new perspective on the piece in her article, that of a woman, which stands in stark contrast to the numerous other reviews of the painting provided by men. Additionally, her article focuses not only on the work itself but also on the critiques and assessments of it that have emerged in the decades since it was initially displayed, prompting readers to think deeply about what reactions to the painting say about viewers and society at large.In 1972, art critic Leo Steinberg in his essay The Philosophical Brothel posited a wholly different explanation for the wide range of stylistic attributes. Using the earlier sketches—which had been ignored by most critics—he argued that far from evidence of an artist undergoing a rapid stylistic metamorphosis, the variety of styles can be read as a deliberate attempt, a careful plan, to capture the gaze of the viewer. He notes that the five women all seem eerily disconnected, indeed wholly unaware of each other. Rather, they focus solely on the viewer, their divergent styles only furthering the intensity of their glare.The earliest sketches feature two men inside the brothel; a sailor and a medical student (who was often depicted holding either a book or a skull, causing Barr and others to read the painting as a memento mori, a reminder of death). A trace of their presence at a table in the center remains: the jutting edge of a table near the bottom of the canvas. The viewer, Steinberg says, has come to replace the sitting men, forced to confront the gaze of prostitutes head on, invoking readings far more complex than a simple allegory or the autobiographical reading that attempts to understand the work in relation to Picasso's own history with women. A world of meanings then becomes possible, suggesting the work as a meditation on the danger of sex, the "trauma of the gaze" (to use a phrase of Rosalind Krauss's invention), and the threat of violence inherent in the scene and sexual relations at large.According to Steinberg, the reversed gaze, that is, the fact that the figures look directly at the viewer, as well as the idea of the self-possessed woman, no longer there solely for the pleasure of the male gaze, may be traced back to Manet's Olympia of 1863. William Rubin (1927–2006), the former director of the Department of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA wrote that "Steinberg was the first writer to come to grips with the sexual subject of the Demoiselles."A few years after writing The Philosophical Brothel, Steinberg wrote further about the revolutionary nature of Les Demoiselles:Picasso was resolved to undo the continuities of form and field which Western art had so long taken for granted. The famous stylistic rupture at right turned out to be merely a consummation. Overnight, the contrived coherences of representational art - the feigned unities of time and place, the stylistic consistencies - all were declared to be fictional. The Demoiselles confessed itself a picture conceived in duration and delivered in spasms. In this one work Picasso discovered that the demands of discontinuity could be met on multiple levels: by cleaving depicted flesh; by elision of limbs and abbreviation; by slashing the web of connecting space; by abrupt changes of vantage; and by a sudden stylistic shift at the climax. Finally, the insistent staccato of the presentation was found to intensify the picture's address and symbolic charge: the beholder, instead of observing a roomfuI of lazing whores, is targeted from all sides. So far from suppressing the subject, the mode of organization heightens its flagrant eroticism.At the end of the first volume of his four volume Picasso biography: A Life Of Picasso. The Prodigy, 1881–1906, John Richardson comments on Les Demoiselles. Richardson says:It is at this point, the beginning of 1907, that I propose to bring this first volume to an end. The 25-year-old Picasso is about to conjure up a quintet of Dionysiac Demoiselles on his huge new canvas. The execution of this painting would make a dramatic climax to these pages. However, it would imply that Picasso's great revolutionary work constitutes a conclusion to all that has gone before. It does not. For all that the Demoiselles is rooted in Picasso's past, not to speak of such precursors as the Iron Age Iberians, El Greco, Gauguin and Cézanne, it is essentially a beginning: the most innovative painting since Giotto. As we will see in the next volume, it established a new pictorial syntax; it enabled people to perceive things with new eyes, new minds, new awareness. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is the first unequivocally 20th-century masterpiece, a principal detonator of the modern movement, the cornerstone of 20th-century art. For Picasso it would also be a rite of passage: what he called an exorcism.' It cleared the way for cubism. It likewise banished the artist's demons. Later, these demons would return and require further exorcism. For the next decade, however, Picasso would feel as free and creative and 'as overworked' as God.Suzanne Preston Blier addresses the history and meaning of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon in a 2019 book in a different way, one that draws on her African art expertise and an array of newly discovered sources she unearthed. Blier addresses the painting not as a simple bordello scene but as Picasso's interpretation of the diversity of women from around the world that Picasso encountered in part through photographs and sculptures seen in illustrated books. These representations, Blier argues, are central to understanding the painting's creation and help identify the demoiselles as global figures – mothers, grandmothers, lovers, and sisters, living the colonial world Picasso inhabited. She says that Picasso has reunited these diverse women together in this strange cave-like (and womb-resembling) setting as a kind of global "time machine" – each woman referencing a different era, place of origins, and concomitant artistic style, as part of the broader "ages of man" theme important to the new century, in which core themes of evolution took on an increasingly important role. The two men (a sailor and a doctor) depicted in some of the painting's earlier preparatory drawings, Blier suggests, likely represent the male authors of two of the illustrated books that Picasso employed – the anthropologist Leo Frobenius as sailor, one travels the world to. explore various ports of call and the Vienna medical doctor, Karl Heinrich Stratz who holds a human skull or book consistent with the detailed anatomical studies that he provides.Blier is able to date the painting to late March 1907 directly following the opening of the Salon des Independents where Matisse and Derain had exhibited their own bold, emotionally charged "origins"-themed tableaux. The large scale of the canvas, Blier says, complements the important scientific and historical theme. The reunion of the mothers of each "race" within this human evolutionary framework, Blier maintains, also constitutes the larger "philosophy" behind the painting's original le bordel philosophique title – evoking the potent "mess" and "complex situation" (le bordel) that Picasso was exploring in this work. In contrast to Leo Steinberg and William Rubin who argued that Picasso had effaced the two right hand demoiselles to repaint their faces with African masks in response to a crisis stemming from larger fears of death or women, an early photograph of the painting in Picasso's studio, Blier shows, indicates that the artist had portrayed African masks on these women from the outset consistent with their identities as progenitors of these races. Blier argues that the painting was largely completed in a single night following a debate about philosophy with friends at a local Paris brasserie.

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 Interpretation of this artwork, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

Picasso drew each of the figures in Les Demoiselles differently. The woman pulling the curtain on the upper right is rendered with heavy paint. Composed of sharp geometric shapes, her head is the most strictly Cubist of all five. The curtain seems to blend partially into her body. The Cubist head of the crouching figure (lower right) underwent at least two revisions from an Iberian figure to its current state. She also seems to have been drawn from two different perspectives at once, creating a confusing, twisted figure. The woman above her is rather manly, with a dark face and square chest. The whole picture is in a two-dimensional style, with an abandoned perspective.Much of the critical debate that has taken place over the years centers on attempting to account for this multiplicity of styles within the work. The dominant understanding for over five decades, espoused most notably by Alfred Barr, the first director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and organizer of major career retrospectives for the artist, has been that it can be interpreted as evidence of a transitional period in Picasso's art, an effort to connect his earlier work to Cubism, the style he would help invent and develop over the next five or six years. Suzanne Preston Blier says that the divergent styles of the painting were added intentionally to convey to each women art "style" attributes from the five geographic areas each woman represents.Art critic John Berger, in his controversial 1965 biography The Success and Failure of Picasso, interprets Les Demoiselles d'Avignon as the provocation that led to Cubism:Blunted by the insolence of so much recent art, we probably tend to underestimate the brutality of the Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. All his friends who saw it in his studio were at first shocked by it. And it was meant to shock…A brothel may not in itself be shocking. But women painted without charm or sadness, without irony or social comment, women painted like the palings of a stockade through eyes that look out as if at death – that is shocking. And equally the method of painting. Picasso himself has said that he was influenced at the time by archaic Spanish (Iberian) sculpture. He was also influenced – particularly in the two heads at the right – by African masks…here it seems that Picasso's quotations are simple, direct, and emotional. He is not in the least concerned with formal problems. The dislocations in this picture are the result of aggression, not aesthetics; it is the nearest you can get in a painting to an outrage…I emphasize the violent and iconoclastic aspect of this painting because it is usually enshrined as the great formal exercise which was the starting point of Cubism. It was the starting point of Cubism, in so far as it prompted Braque to begin painting at the end of the year his own far more formal answer to Les Demoiselles d'Avignon…yet if he had been left to himself, this picture would never have led Picasso to Cubism or to any way of painting remotely resembling it…It has nothing to do with that twentieth-century vision of the future which was the essence of Cubism.Yet it did provoke the beginning of the great period of exception in Picasso's life. Nobody can know exactly how the change began inside Picasso. We can only note the results. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, unlike any previous painting by Picasso, offers no evidence of skill. On the contrary, it is clumsy, overworked, unfinished. It is as though his fury in painting it was so great that it destroyed his gifts…By painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon Picasso provoked Cubism. It was the spontaneous and, as always, primitive insurrection out of which, for good historical reasons, the revolution of Cubism developed.Art historian and professor Anna C. Chave agrees with Berger that Les Demoiselles d'Avignon can be taken as the catalyst for the style of Cubism in her 1994 article, New Encounters with Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon: Gender, Race, and the Origins of Cubism. Chave also gives an interesting new perspective on the piece in her article, that of a woman, which stands in stark contrast to the numerous other reviews of the painting provided by men. Additionally, her article focuses not only on the work itself but also on the critiques and assessments of it that have emerged in the decades since it was initially displayed, prompting readers to think deeply about what reactions to the painting say about viewers and society at large.In 1972, art critic Leo Steinberg in his essay The Philosophical Brothel posited a wholly different explanation for the wide range of stylistic attributes. Using the earlier sketches—which had been ignored by most critics—he argued that far from evidence of an artist undergoing a rapid stylistic metamorphosis, the variety of styles can be read as a deliberate attempt, a careful plan, to capture the gaze of the viewer. He notes that the five women all seem eerily disconnected, indeed wholly unaware of each other. Rather, they focus solely on the viewer, their divergent styles only furthering the intensity of their glare.The earliest sketches feature two men inside the brothel; a sailor and a medical student (who was often depicted holding either a book or a skull, causing Barr and others to read the painting as a memento mori, a reminder of death). A trace of their presence at a table in the center remains: the jutting edge of a table near the bottom of the canvas. The viewer, Steinberg says, has come to replace the sitting men, forced to confront the gaze of prostitutes head on, invoking readings far more complex than a simple allegory or the autobiographical reading that attempts to understand the work in relation to Picasso's own history with women. A world of meanings then becomes possible, suggesting the work as a meditation on the danger of sex, the "trauma of the gaze" (to use a phrase of Rosalind Krauss's invention), and the threat of violence inherent in the scene and sexual relations at large.According to Steinberg, the reversed gaze, that is, the fact that the figures look directly at the viewer, as well as the idea of the self-possessed woman, no longer there solely for the pleasure of the male gaze, may be traced back to Manet's Olympia of 1863. William Rubin (1927–2006), the former director of the Department of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA wrote that "Steinberg was the first writer to come to grips with the sexual subject of the Demoiselles."A few years after writing The Philosophical Brothel, Steinberg wrote further about the revolutionary nature of Les Demoiselles:Picasso was resolved to undo the continuities of form and field which Western art had so long taken for granted. The famous stylistic rupture at right turned out to be merely a consummation. Overnight, the contrived coherences of representational art - the feigned unities of time and place, the stylistic consistencies - all were declared to be fictional. The Demoiselles confessed itself a picture conceived in duration and delivered in spasms. In this one work Picasso discovered that the demands of discontinuity could be met on multiple levels: by cleaving depicted flesh; by elision of limbs and abbreviation; by slashing the web of connecting space; by abrupt changes of vantage; and by a sudden stylistic shift at the climax. Finally, the insistent staccato of the presentation was found to intensify the picture's address and symbolic charge: the beholder, instead of observing a roomfuI of lazing whores, is targeted from all sides. So far from suppressing the subject, the mode of organization heightens its flagrant eroticism.At the end of the first volume of his four volume Picasso biography: A Life Of Picasso. The Prodigy, 1881–1906, John Richardson comments on Les Demoiselles. Richardson says:It is at this point, the beginning of 1907, that I propose to bring this first volume to an end. The 25-year-old Picasso is about to conjure up a quintet of Dionysiac Demoiselles on his huge new canvas. The execution of this painting would make a dramatic climax to these pages. However, it would imply that Picasso's great revolutionary work constitutes a conclusion to all that has gone before. It does not. For all that the Demoiselles is rooted in Picasso's past, not to speak of such precursors as the Iron Age Iberians, El Greco, Gauguin and Cézanne, it is essentially a beginning: the most innovative painting since Giotto. As we will see in the next volume, it established a new pictorial syntax; it enabled people to perceive things with new eyes, new minds, new awareness. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is the first unequivocally 20th-century masterpiece, a principal detonator of the modern movement, the cornerstone of 20th-century art. For Picasso it would also be a rite of passage: what he called an exorcism.' It cleared the way for cubism. It likewise banished the artist's demons. Later, these demons would return and require further exorcism. For the next decade, however, Picasso would feel as free and creative and 'as overworked' as God.Suzanne Preston Blier addresses the history and meaning of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon in a 2019 book in a different way, one that draws on her African art expertise and an array of newly discovered sources she unearthed. Blier addresses the painting not as a simple bordello scene but as Picasso's interpretation of the diversity of women from around the world that Picasso encountered in part through photographs and sculptures seen in illustrated books. These representations, Blier argues, are central to understanding the painting's creation and help identify the demoiselles as global figures – mothers, grandmothers, lovers, and sisters, living the colonial world Picasso inhabited. She says that Picasso has reunited these diverse women together in this strange cave-like (and womb-resembling) setting as a kind of global "time machine" – each woman referencing a different era, place of origins, and concomitant artistic style, as part of the broader "ages of man" theme important to the new century, in which core themes of evolution took on an increasingly important role. The two men (a sailor and a doctor) depicted in some of the painting's earlier preparatory drawings, Blier suggests, likely represent the male authors of two of the illustrated books that Picasso employed – the anthropologist Leo Frobenius as sailor, one travels the world to. explore various ports of call and the Vienna medical doctor, Karl Heinrich Stratz who holds a human skull or book consistent with the detailed anatomical studies that he provides.Blier is able to date the painting to late March 1907 directly following the opening of the Salon des Independents where Matisse and Derain had exhibited their own bold, emotionally charged "origins"-themed tableaux. The large scale of the canvas, Blier says, complements the important scientific and historical theme. The reunion of the mothers of each "race" within this human evolutionary framework, Blier maintains, also constitutes the larger "philosophy" behind the painting's original le bordel philosophique title – evoking the potent "mess" and "complex situation" (le bordel) that Picasso was exploring in this work. In contrast to Leo Steinberg and William Rubin who argued that Picasso had effaced the two right hand demoiselles to repaint their faces with African masks in response to a crisis stemming from larger fears of death or women, an early photograph of the painting in Picasso's studio, Blier shows, indicates that the artist had portrayed African masks on these women from the outset consistent with their identities as progenitors of these races. Blier argues that the painting was largely completed in a single night following a debate about philosophy with friends at a local Paris brasserie.

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 Interpretation?

Picasso drew each of the figures in Les Demoiselles differently. The woman pulling the curtain on the upper right is rendered with heavy paint. Composed of sharp geometric shapes, her head is the most strictly Cubist of all five. The curtain seems to blend partially into her body. The Cubist head of the crouching figure (lower right) underwent at least two revisions from an Iberian figure to its current state. She also seems to have been drawn from two different perspectives at once, creating a confusing, twisted figure. The woman above her is rather manly, with a dark face and square chest. The whole picture is in a two-dimensional style, with an abandoned perspective.Much of the critical debate that has taken place over the years centers on attempting to account for this multiplicity of styles within the work. The dominant understanding for over five decades, espoused most notably by Alfred Barr, the first director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and organizer of major career retrospectives for the artist, has been that it can be interpreted as evidence of a transitional period in Picasso's art, an effort to connect his earlier work to Cubism, the style he would help invent and develop over the next five or six years. Suzanne Preston Blier says that the divergent styles of the painting were added intentionally to convey to each women art "style" attributes from the five geographic areas each woman represents.Art critic John Berger, in his controversial 1965 biography The Success and Failure of Picasso, interprets Les Demoiselles d'Avignon as the provocation that led to Cubism:Blunted by the insolence of so much recent art, we probably tend to underestimate the brutality of the Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. All his friends who saw it in his studio were at first shocked by it. And it was meant to shock…A brothel may not in itself be shocking. But women painted without charm or sadness, without irony or social comment, women painted like the palings of a stockade through eyes that look out as if at death – that is shocking. And equally the method of painting. Picasso himself has said that he was influenced at the time by archaic Spanish (Iberian) sculpture. He was also influenced – particularly in the two heads at the right – by African masks…here it seems that Picasso's quotations are simple, direct, and emotional. He is not in the least concerned with formal problems. The dislocations in this picture are the result of aggression, not aesthetics; it is the nearest you can get in a painting to an outrage…I emphasize the violent and iconoclastic aspect of this painting because it is usually enshrined as the great formal exercise which was the starting point of Cubism. It was the starting point of Cubism, in so far as it prompted Braque to begin painting at the end of the year his own far more formal answer to Les Demoiselles d'Avignon…yet if he had been left to himself, this picture would never have led Picasso to Cubism or to any way of painting remotely resembling it…It has nothing to do with that twentieth-century vision of the future which was the essence of Cubism.Yet it did provoke the beginning of the great period of exception in Picasso's life. Nobody can know exactly how the change began inside Picasso. We can only note the results. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, unlike any previous painting by Picasso, offers no evidence of skill. On the contrary, it is clumsy, overworked, unfinished. It is as though his fury in painting it was so great that it destroyed his gifts…By painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon Picasso provoked Cubism. It was the spontaneous and, as always, primitive insurrection out of which, for good historical reasons, the revolution of Cubism developed.Art historian and professor Anna C. Chave agrees with Berger that Les Demoiselles d'Avignon can be taken as the catalyst for the style of Cubism in her 1994 article, New Encounters with Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon: Gender, Race, and the Origins of Cubism. Chave also gives an interesting new perspective on the piece in her article, that of a woman, which stands in stark contrast to the numerous other reviews of the painting provided by men. Additionally, her article focuses not only on the work itself but also on the critiques and assessments of it that have emerged in the decades since it was initially displayed, prompting readers to think deeply about what reactions to the painting say about viewers and society at large.In 1972, art critic Leo Steinberg in his essay The Philosophical Brothel posited a wholly different explanation for the wide range of stylistic attributes. Using the earlier sketches—which had been ignored by most critics—he argued that far from evidence of an artist undergoing a rapid stylistic metamorphosis, the variety of styles can be read as a deliberate attempt, a careful plan, to capture the gaze of the viewer. He notes that the five women all seem eerily disconnected, indeed wholly unaware of each other. Rather, they focus solely on the viewer, their divergent styles only furthering the intensity of their glare.The earliest sketches feature two men inside the brothel; a sailor and a medical student (who was often depicted holding either a book or a skull, causing Barr and others to read the painting as a memento mori, a reminder of death). A trace of their presence at a table in the center remains: the jutting edge of a table near the bottom of the canvas. The viewer, Steinberg says, has come to replace the sitting men, forced to confront the gaze of prostitutes head on, invoking readings far more complex than a simple allegory or the autobiographical reading that attempts to understand the work in relation to Picasso's own history with women. A world of meanings then becomes possible, suggesting the work as a meditation on the danger of sex, the "trauma of the gaze" (to use a phrase of Rosalind Krauss's invention), and the threat of violence inherent in the scene and sexual relations at large.According to Steinberg, the reversed gaze, that is, the fact that the figures look directly at the viewer, as well as the idea of the self-possessed woman, no longer there solely for the pleasure of the male gaze, may be traced back to Manet's Olympia of 1863. William Rubin (1927–2006), the former director of the Department of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA wrote that "Steinberg was the first writer to come to grips with the sexual subject of the Demoiselles."A few years after writing The Philosophical Brothel, Steinberg wrote further about the revolutionary nature of Les Demoiselles:Picasso was resolved to undo the continuities of form and field which Western art had so long taken for granted. The famous stylistic rupture at right turned out to be merely a consummation. Overnight, the contrived coherences of representational art - the feigned unities of time and place, the stylistic consistencies - all were declared to be fictional. The Demoiselles confessed itself a picture conceived in duration and delivered in spasms. In this one work Picasso discovered that the demands of discontinuity could be met on multiple levels: by cleaving depicted flesh; by elision of limbs and abbreviation; by slashing the web of connecting space; by abrupt changes of vantage; and by a sudden stylistic shift at the climax. Finally, the insistent staccato of the presentation was found to intensify the picture's address and symbolic charge: the beholder, instead of observing a roomfuI of lazing whores, is targeted from all sides. So far from suppressing the subject, the mode of organization heightens its flagrant eroticism.At the end of the first volume of his four volume Picasso biography: A Life Of Picasso. The Prodigy, 1881–1906, John Richardson comments on Les Demoiselles. Richardson says:It is at this point, the beginning of 1907, that I propose to bring this first volume to an end. The 25-year-old Picasso is about to conjure up a quintet of Dionysiac Demoiselles on his huge new canvas. The execution of this painting would make a dramatic climax to these pages. However, it would imply that Picasso's great revolutionary work constitutes a conclusion to all that has gone before. It does not. For all that the Demoiselles is rooted in Picasso's past, not to speak of such precursors as the Iron Age Iberians, El Greco, Gauguin and Cézanne, it is essentially a beginning: the most innovative painting since Giotto. As we will see in the next volume, it established a new pictorial syntax; it enabled people to perceive things with new eyes, new minds, new awareness. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is the first unequivocally 20th-century masterpiece, a principal detonator of the modern movement, the cornerstone of 20th-century art. For Picasso it would also be a rite of passage: what he called an exorcism.' It cleared the way for cubism. It likewise banished the artist's demons. Later, these demons would return and require further exorcism. For the next decade, however, Picasso would feel as free and creative and 'as overworked' as God.Suzanne Preston Blier addresses the history and meaning of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon in a 2019 book in a different way, one that draws on her African art expertise and an array of newly discovered sources she unearthed. Blier addresses the painting not as a simple bordello scene but as Picasso's interpretation of the diversity of women from around the world that Picasso encountered in part through photographs and sculptures seen in illustrated books. These representations, Blier argues, are central to understanding the painting's creation and help identify the demoiselles as global figures – mothers, grandmothers, lovers, and sisters, living the colonial world Picasso inhabited. She says that Picasso has reunited these diverse women together in this strange cave-like (and womb-resembling) setting as a kind of global "time machine" – each woman referencing a different era, place of origins, and concomitant artistic style, as part of the broader "ages of man" theme important to the new century, in which core themes of evolution took on an increasingly important role. The two men (a sailor and a doctor) depicted in some of the painting's earlier preparatory drawings, Blier suggests, likely represent the male authors of two of the illustrated books that Picasso employed – the anthropologist Leo Frobenius as sailor, one travels the world to. explore various ports of call and the Vienna medical doctor, Karl Heinrich Stratz who holds a human skull or book consistent with the detailed anatomical studies that he provides.Blier is able to date the painting to late March 1907 directly following the opening of the Salon des Independents where Matisse and Derain had exhibited their own bold, emotionally charged "origins"-themed tableaux. The large scale of the canvas, Blier says, complements the important scientific and historical theme. The reunion of the mothers of each "race" within this human evolutionary framework, Blier maintains, also constitutes the larger "philosophy" behind the painting's original le bordel philosophique title – evoking the potent "mess" and "complex situation" (le bordel) that Picasso was exploring in this work. In contrast to Leo Steinberg and William Rubin who argued that Picasso had effaced the two right hand demoiselles to repaint their faces with African masks in response to a crisis stemming from larger fears of death or women, an early photograph of the painting in Picasso's studio, Blier shows, indicates that the artist had portrayed African masks on these women from the outset consistent with their identities as progenitors of these races. Blier argues that the painting was largely completed in a single night following a debate about philosophy with friends at a local Paris brasserie.

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''