Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon) was a 1907 cubist painting by Picasso.[1] It represents five women in a brothel.[1] It took him nine months to paint it.[2] Picasso gave up all attempts at traditional painting in this early cubist painting.[2] He distorted the female figures in a way that showed the influence of African art.[2] When the 8 square feet (0.74 m2) painting was shown in his studio to a group of painters and critics, they were outraged.[1] Henri Matisse called it a hoax and an attempt to paint the fourth dimension,[1] The art critic André Salmon wrote: "It was the ugliness of the faces that froze with horror the half-converted".[1] Another painter, André Derain, wrote: "One day we shall find Pablo has hanged himself behind his great canvas".[1] It has been called one of the most significant paintings of the 20th century.[3] The two figures on the right are shown with African mask-like features, an interest of Picasso at the time.[4]
Les Demoiselles D'Avignon Media
Henri Rousseau, The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope, 1905, was the reason for the term Fauvism, and the original "Wild Beast"
Paul Cézanne's Les Grandes Baigneuses (1906, oil on canvas, 210.5 × 250.8 cm., 827⁄8 × 983⁄4 inches, Philadelphia Museum of Art) is generally believed to be a likely inspiration for Les Demoiselles.
African Fang mask similar in style to those Picasso saw in Paris just prior to painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
Congo masks published by Leo Frobenius in his 1898 book Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrika
An illustration from Jouffret's Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions. The book, which influenced Picasso, was given to him by Princet.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 "Pablo Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon 1907". Culture Shock. PBS. Retrieved January 21, 2017.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907 by Pablo Picasso". PabloPicasso.org. Retrieved January 21, 2017.
- ↑ Camille Paglia 2012. Glittering Images: a journey through art from Egypt to Star Wars New York: Pantheon, p. 103.
- ↑ Gina M. Rossetti 2006. Imagining the primitive in naturalist and modernist literature. University of Missouri Press. ISBN 0826265030
Other websites
- Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907; YouTube
- Les Demoiselles d'Avignon; Washington University Digital Archive