Picassos Les Demoiselles d Avignon

Picassos Les Demoiselles d Avignon

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Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon: Influences and Interpretations
Throughout history, art has been one of the most important means of expression. Human kind has used its various forms, such as paintings, sculptures, music and literature, in order to cite, interpret and react to the political, social as well as economic state of affairs of the time. Society, with all its characteristics, had a great impact on art and prompted the development of numerous movements. Most artists worked within the boundaries set by the specific school of thought that they adhered to. However, certain artists’ imaginations and individual evolutions resulted in their breaking away from the norms and conventions of the present. By challenging the established views and questioning the canon, the artists’ vision functions as the medium through which the collective unconscious finds its symbolic representation and is thus guided towards the attainment of self-awareness. This seems to have been the case with Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) who “reinvented himself repeatedly, and was at the forefront of several artistic movements” . Through his art, he contested the moral, political and artistic traditions of his time and often condemned them; he forced people to face society’s problems. In the beginning of the twentieth century, in the midst of Europe’s Golden Era of colonialism, Picasso broke the artistic boundaries by formally introducing primitive art to the Western culture. Examples of such works of art are: Two nudes (fig. 1), Autoportrait (fig.2), Buste de femme (fig.3), Grande danseuse d’Avinyo (fig. 4), Nude with drapery (fig. 5), Cinque femmes (fig. 6) and Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon (fig. 7). Through his painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, he criticizes the social arrogance and hypocrisy of the West, concerning Europeans’ sexual behavior primarily, and its attempts through political and military oppression to westernize the colonies. He attempts to reverse the process and “primitivize the West”. This work was influenced by Iberian, African as well as European art, and its importance is derived from the fact that this painting is widely considered as a “revolutionary breakthrough in the history of modern art” and as the turning point towards Cubism.

Pablo Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain, in 1881. His ancestors, from both sides of his middle – class family were from Malaga for many generations. He must have been “profoundly influenced by the nature of the society that he grew up in” . In Picasso’s time, Spain’s economy was predominantly feudal, there had been no successful bourgeois revolution and the typical political movement had been anarchism. As a whole, Spain was fundamentally different from France, Great Britain and Germany. As a child, Picasso showed great promise; “he could draw before he could speak” , he was a child prodigy. By the age of fourteen, he was admitted to the senior department of the Barcelona Art School and by the age of sixteen he was admitted with honors to the Royal Academy of Madrid. In 1990, he spent a few months in Paris and in 1904 he settled there permanently. Finally, he died in 1973 of a heart attack in his home near Cannes on the French Riviera.

Pablo Picasso is considered as one of the most eminent and significant artists of the past century. He was influenced by the various movements as well as his fellow artists. On the other hand, he himself influenced Western art by his use of new and fundamentally different techniques. He was a very active person and continued to paint until the last year of his life. As a result, he left behind a great number of creations and it is impossible to decide which one is his “best”. However, one can pinpoint the most influential works of art of Pablo Picasso that changed the course of Western art history. One of these works is the painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, which pointed the way to Cubist revolution.

The numerous initial sketches of the figures portrayed in the painting reveal Picasso’s struggle in arriving at a new style. The first ensemble sketch for the Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon (fig. 8) probably dates around the beginning of 1907; however, we cannot be sure. Originally, it was entitled Le Bordel d’ Avignon and consisted of seven figures; five women and two men. The two men have been recognized as a sailor and a medical student. The associated identities of the sailor are left to the discretion of the viewer, whereas the medical student is considered the “personification of the painter” . Picasso associated one of the sketches of the study of the student with his self-portrait. This is not to mean, however, that the student IS Picasso; he is merely an allusion to the artist. Moreover, there is no formal identification of the women. We only have “Picasso’s account to Kahnweiler of the studio jokes, in which the whores were variously identified with Fernande, Marie Laurencin, and Max Jacob’s grandmother, plus a more abbreviated account by Sabartes, which added Max’s sister to the cast” . The figures are placed in the center of the painting and the sailor is the focal point. The scene is introduced by the student that carries what has been identified as a skull and pulls back the curtain. The five nude female figures are surrounding the sailor in sexually provocative positions, three of them are standing and the other two are seated. However, the final version of the painting has been modified on the most part. During his struggle leading up to the final composition, the format of the painting changed from horizontal to vertical, the two male figures have been totally eliminated, even though the sailor survived longer than the medical student, and the positioning of the female figures has been altered; four of the figures are now standing and one is seated. The focal point is no longer the sailor but the female that had been standing behind him in the first version.

Some of the differences between the two versions mentioned above may arise from the fact that the first one is merely a study sketch and the other one is his final piece. The coloring in the first ensemble sketch seems incomplete. One possible reason behind it may be that Picasso wanted to emphasize his male figures and make them stand out. In the left corner, he uses warm and dark colors to create a contrast between the outside world and the one behind the curtain (i.e. the brothel). On the other hand, in the final painting, the colors used are bright and vibrant, grab the attention of the viewers and distinguish the five female figures from the background. This background however, is not well defined and causes further tension between actual representation of the theme and its abstraction. “Instead of representing the figures as continuous volumes, he fractured their shapes and interwove them with the equally jagged planes that represent drapery and empty space. The space, so entwined with the bodies, is virtually illegible” . The traditional concept of order and unity that characterized the artist’s initial studies of this painting has been eliminated. One can clearly distinguish the details of the setting in the initial ensemble sketch, such as the vase, the chair and the “flowing” drapery.

Certain major distinguishing characteristics of the final piece are its abrupt and angular format and the deconstruction of human bodies. This deconstruction is essential in capturing the essence of images and furthermore in allowing the audience to interpret the images using their own imaginations and attach their own meaning to them. “Even the space in which they stand seems to be sculptured” ; Picasso concentrated on the volume and mass instead of techniques in order to create an atmosphere. The nude female bodies are painted in their natural state which is out of proportion with the European ideal notions. In addition some critics refer to them as caricatures rather than models. Two of the figures, the second demoiselle from the left and the crouching demoiselle on the lower right, are derived directly from his sketches of the Two Nudes (1906). Contrary to the form of their bodies which is similar in all five, their faces can be classified in three different types. The facial features of the first woman on the left are thought to have been influenced by the Oceanic culture. They are “more mysterious than malefic” . The colors used for the two demoiselles on the right suggest the characteristic combination of orange, blue, white, and yellow in Oceanic objects. In addition, the face is darker and sterner, and the characteristics themselves are harder than the ones of the two central figures. These figures are influenced by the Iberian “style” and are therefore idealized, softer, calmer and more tranquil and realistic in comparison to the rest. It can be also argued that Picasso followed this style in order to make these two figures more attractive. Finally, the faces of the remaining two figures found on the right side of the painting resemble the mask of the Etoumbi region (fig. 9). They are distorted, aggressive, energetic and “violently striated” . Furthermore, the face of crouching woman on the lower right side of the painting seems even more contorted, as if Picasso was trying to portray the face as viewed simultaneously from all possible points of view. Yet, it impossible to twist one’s head 180 degrees and this is the reason why “some have suggested that her “face” is a mask on the back of her head” .
What has given rise to a serious number of studies and debates is whether Picasso had an actual mask in front of him while painting or if these faces are products of his imagination in conjunction with a subconscious remembrance of some African masks that he had come across in the past. There are two contradicting arguments concerning Picasso’s use of African objects and artifacts. There are scholars and art historians who believe that he used them in order to succeed in rejecting the established forms and pursuing innovation and self- development and on the other hand there are critics who claim that he turned to “masking when he felt he had failed to capture the human face even after numerous sittings” . What one can say with certainty is that Picasso was influenced by the non- Western cultures and prompted the entrance of primitivism in modern art. The motifs of primitivism can be clearly observed when one studies his painting of Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon; the exaggerated features, the lack of facial and bodily proportions, the stark geometric designs and the “destructive forces which lurk outside of a man’s comprehension, particularly madness, spiritual punishment, unrestrained urges to violence or sexuality” .

One of the main sources of inspiration of twentieth century art was non- Western culture. This was brought about by the extensive colonization by the European powers of the time. In relevance to the political justification of colonialism, where people are considered as uncivilized and in need of reform, their art was also considered as such and was referred to as primitive. Objects and artifacts were available to people through displays in European and American museums as well as through private collections and were referred to “as artificial curiosities or as fetish objects” . One of the most extensive exhibitions of this kind of art was found in the Trocaderó museum. What appealed to western artists was the originality that characterized the works of “primitive” people and, as Emil Nolde stated, “their intense and often grotesque expression of power and life in very simple forms”. Artists, such as Pablo Picasso, saw “primitivism” as a way to escape the confines of Western art. Picasso was attracted to the directness and the exoticism of non-urban and underdeveloped cultures and “what struck him most about the fetishes was not their form, although this was certainly evident in his paintings, but their spirit” . He was excited to realize that for the first time his discovery of an art was not a mere discovery of a style. However, one universal but false assumption is that he respected these cultures and their people. Despite his general interest and involvement in the anti-colonial movement, when he referred to the “Negro”, he was alluding to the African objects, not the native people. This is why he tried to extract the elements of the African form that would serve best his purpose and rejected all the other features of the African culture as irrelevant. He referred to such objects as “intercessors”, or “instruments for mediating the kinds of forces, often unspoken and unlicensed, which he needed in order to break through the edifice of modernity” . The adoption of a primitivistic style provided the “bridge” for a somewhat gradual transition from his works that predated 1906 and the ones created during his cubist period.

Picasso’s painting Les demoiselles d’ Avignon was probably influenced by the creations of other artists of his period as well. It is often argued that the structure he used, i.e. the arrangement of the nudes as“architecture of bodies” , alludes to Cezanne’s figurative works. However, certain texts, such as the book Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon (edited by Rubin W., Seckel H., Cousins J.), reject this notion and claim that only the initial sketches showed some resemblance and that the influence of Cezanne has been overestimated. Moreover, another artist that seems to have influenced Picasso’s work is El Greco and did so through his painting Apocalyptic Vision (fig. 10). Most importantly, the actual dimensions of the paintings were very similar. Even though Picasso’s initial sketches were horizontal in format, only at the very last stages does he change it to vertical. In addition, the “extreme figure distortions, autonomous drapery patterns, and the vigorous painterly execution” , as well as a certain degree of androgyny in some of
the figures, are characteristics that are commonly shared by these two paintings.

In the beginning, Picasso started working on this painting having a symbolic picture in mind. Both the initial title (Le Bordel d’ Avignon) and the final title (Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon) suggest some brothel scene. In the initial sketches it is easy to interpret the setting as a brothel, whereas in the final version of the painting the only thing that suggests such a scene is the title and Picasso’s confirmation of what the painting represents; the rejection of the bourgeois society, colonialism, sexual inhibitions and outdated mores. This painting serves as an attack to life as Picasso saw it; ugly, ruthless, immoral and full of diseases. What is more, Picasso deals with two of the more oppressed groups of his time, Africans and working- class women. To most Europeans, the nature as well as the culture of the conquered people had little or no significance. Confident in their superiority, they exploited and abused them. Working- class women and more specifically prostitutes, on the other hand, were treated with disdain and little was done to help them. The belief that having unemotional sex with a prostitute was less sinful than having passionate sex with one’s wife is what made prostitution flourish in European cities. One of the downsides though was the spread of syphilis, a fatal disease in Picasso’s time (much like AIDS nowadays). By portraying prostitutes that “repel rather than attract, Picasso was emphasizing the ugliness that was at the core of being forced into prostitution” and by putting the viewers in the place of the client he forced them to confront the reality of prostitution as well as the moral hypocrisy of Western societies. The demoiselles can be thought as “Picasso’s doubles; they enact his own attraction and repulsion, his forbidden sexual desire and his fear of syphilis” . As a result, the most prevailing theme of this painting is the cohabitation of love and death (Eros and Thanatos) and the painting itself is raw and shocking. Moreover, the skull that the medical student was carrying in the initial ensemble sketches was probably a mean to remind the sailor and the prostitutes of death. It can be argued that the sailor and the artistic are “complementary alter egos of the artist” . The sailor refers to the part of him that loathed the female body and the medical student refers to the dominance of reason and fear of death over such desires.

Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon was so wicked and horrifying that Matisse and Stein temporarily distanced themselves from Picasso. However, once they realized its significance and came to terms with its brutality, they accepted it and followed Picasso’s footsteps in reforming modern art. His friends’ reactions might have been the reason why the public had not been able to admire his work until he sold it in1939. Following this work, Picasso became a part of a group and “was no longer isolated, no longer bound to his past, but open to the free interchange of ideas” . His friends and Braque contributed tremendously in Picasso’s transformation.

In conclusion, the painting Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon underwent a number of changes. Its final form was the result of a combination of Picasso’s fears and views, non- Western cultures and creations of other artists of that period. Because of its peculiar form some critics consider it unfinished. Due to Europe’s stability during that period, artists and audiences were more receptive to new things that challenged their conventions. This painting established him as “an original voice in the Primitivism movement” and is considered to have provoked Cubism. This becomes clear when one looks at seven relevant paintings in chronological order. These paintings are the following: Les Grandes Baigneuses (1898-1906) by Cezanne (fig.11), Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon (1907) by Picasso (fig. 7), Nude (1907-8) by Braque (fig.12), Landscape with Bridge (1908) by Picasso (fig. 13), Houses at Estaque (1908) by Braque (fig.14), Girl with a Mandolin (1910) by Picasso (fig. 15), Violin and Guitar (1913) by Picasso (fig. 16). The rise of new artistic movements always meets some resistance and, in my opinion, this is why the institutions of interpretation have always been anxious to minimize any direct correlation between the redefinition of modern art and tribal objects and conceptions. Human nature depends largely on its habits and anything that may result in disturbance and discontinuity is considered threatening and is initially defied. Non-Western cultures are confined within the space of primitivism, where they pose no danger to the “purity” of modern art.

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The above essay was written by a college student and merely states opinions of a college student. However, if you feel strong about responding to the opinions stated, please write to articles@directorym.com and express your concerns.


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