Demoiselles D'Avignon by Pablo Picasso - Essay Example

Demoiselles D’Avignon by Pablo Picasso Visual Arts and Film Studies Demoiselles D’Avignon by Pablo Picasso Les Demoiselles D’Avignon by Pablo Picasso is a magnificent piece of art. The style in used in painting of the picture is entirely distinctive of Picasso. He completed the picture in 1907. Picasso always applied oil on his canvas. In general, Pablo Picasso is famous for producing unnaturally distorted pictures in his paintings, Les Demoiselles D’Avignon has been an excellent example. Presently, the picture is displayed in New York’s Museum of Modern Art.1 In the twentieth century, one of the most significant canvases, Picasso’s , Les Demoiselles D’Avignon, was created due to various reasons. First, among them was the confrontation he had with Cézanne’s extraordinary accomplishment at the posthumous show which took place in Paris in 1907, a year following the artist’s death. The retrospective exhibition drove the young Picasso, Matisse, as well as many other artists into competing with the inferences of the art of Cézanne. 1906’s Bonheur de Vivre by Matisse was his first attempt, which was later given to Leo & Gertrude Stein, who went ahead to hang it inside their living room thereby ensuring that all of the avant-garde artists and writers were capable of seeing and praising it. The praises led to the fulfillment of the promise made by Cézanne that the painting was worth them.2 Throughout his paintings, Picasso treated women the same way he treated his projects since he used to sketch a little, paint and then progress to the next painting. Although Picasso had over 25,000 works by his name, which mostly concentrated on women; to him, women were merely an object of his enjoyment and pleasure. According to Picasso, there are two sorts of women, the goddesses and the door mats; however, his once goddesses eventually turned into doormats due to his constant infidelity. Picasso is convinced that none of them was capable of becoming anything more than a door mat that why he treated them like disposable objects. Nevertheless, there is one woman who refused to be portrayed as a door mat; as a result, she went crazy and fought back.3 Picasso had an intensely competitive nature, which literally forced him into outdoing his celebrated opponent. Les Demoiselles D’Avignon happens to be the outcome of such clash. When we compare canvases, we realize that Matisse’s landscape turn out to be a wide open field with a profound recessionary vista. Here, the pictures are not crowded and portray flowing arabesques, which in turn connect with the forms of nature surrounding them. This is a relaxed sensuality setting in the mythic pattern of the golden age of Greece. In exceptionally strong contrast, the intention of Picasso while making an identity for himself has radically condensed his canvas’ space and substituted sensual eroticism with an assertively crude pornography. His space is not only interior, but also closed, as well as almost claustrophobic. Similarly to Blue Nude, which is Matisse’s later painting that is in itself a rejoinder to Les Demoiselles D’Avignon, whereby the women fill up the whole space and give the impression of getting trapped inside it. Les Demoiselles D’Avignon clearly relates with the present time since it is no longer set within a classical past. In this painting, there are five prostitutes from a real brothel, situated on a street known as Avignon within the red-light locality in Barcelona, Spain. This is the same street that Picasso had visited.4 Picasso has also dealt out with the clear, bright pigments of Matisse; he prefers deeper tones suiting for urban interior light. The sensuality that Matisse established is also gone since Picasso uses sharply, jagged, nearly shattered forms as a replacement of the elegant Bonheur de Vivre’s curves. The bodies of women in Picasso’s pain look hazardous as if they were created from shards of broken glass. Although Matisse’s pleasure turns out to be Picasso’s apprehension since Picasso clearly focuses on outdoing Matisse while at the same time, invading as the most extremist artist in Paris, he is quick to acknowledge his debts. For instance, in Les Demoiselles DAvignon, there is a woman standing at the middle, when compared to the woman standing up with elbows lifted at the furthest left of Bonheur de Vivre by Matisse; this is comparable to a scholar citing a sponged quotation.5 Picasso uses numerous other sources in the construction of Les Demoiselles DAvignon. In reality, several artists stopped giving him invitations into their studio since he ended up freely and successfully incorporating their ideas to his own work thereby becoming extremely successfully compared to the original artist. Picasso was equated to an inspired vacuum cleaner that sucks up each new idea that he encountered. Although that analogy may be a little bristly, it is only fair to assert that he had a tremendous creative craving. Archaic art happens to be one of numerous historical sources Picasso stole. It is portrayed clearly in the left-most picture of the Les Demoiselles DAvignon, whereby a woman is standing laboriously on her legs, which seem to be gracelessly locked at the knee. In this painting, her right arm protrudes down, whereas her left arm looks as if it is dislocated (this arm is a sign of a male picture, which Picasso eventually took off). Her head is in perfect shape with immense almond shaped eyes with a flat abstracted face, something that makes her look like an Egyptian. Recently, Picasso saw an exhibition of archaic (a prehistoric ancient pre-classical design) Iberian (coming from Iberia i.e. the land mass, which constitutes Spain and Portugal) statue at the Louvre. Rather than revisiting ancient Greece the sensual myths, Picasso is using the real thing and fixing it directly. It is said that Picasso bought two archaic Iberian heads from Apollinaire’s secretary, which she had embezzled from the Louvre! Apparently, some years later, Picasso secretly returned them.6 In Les Demoiselles DAvignon, there are the two masked shapes on the right that refer, through their hostility, to Picasso’s fright of disease. This gets connected to the left-most shape to archaic Iberian sculpture, as well as Picasso’s attempt of eliciting a crude primitive openness. That leaves only a single woman unjustified; this is the same woman whose right elbow gets lifted with her left hand resting on a sheet dragged athwart her left thigh. Conversely, the table together with fruit, which had initially been positioned at the sailor’s groin, is not round anymore; rather, it has been lengthened, sharpened, and lowered to the rim of the canvas. The table points towards this last woman. Based on Picasso’s meaning, the still existence of fruit on top of the table happens to be a prehistoric sign of sexuality. It is also the erect penis of the observer, and it points out to the picked woman. Picasso was not a feminist; rather, according to his vision, the observer is male.7 In spite of this imagery being explicit, it only points to the primary issue. The chosen woman is handled specifically in terms of her connection to the surrounding space. All through the canvas, the women together with the drapery (made of curtains and sheets) are not only fractured, but also splintered. According to Picasso’s rejoinder to Cezanne and Matisse, these women are neither beforehand nor behind. In Matisse’s Red Studio that will be ready four years from now, Picasso is trying to melt the figure/ground connection. The woman in Picasso’s painting shows that her legs are crossed while her hand relaxes behind her head; though she appears as standing amongst the others, her location is undoubtedly that of a figure, which lies on her back. Unfortunately, her body is seen perpendicular to the line of sight. Similarly to Matisse and Cezanne, Picasso here portrays two moments in time, firstly gazing across at the women’s row, and then gazing down on the prostitute of Picasso’s choice.8 In Les Demoiselles DAvignon, the two pictures at the right happen to be the most assertively abstracted with faces portrayed as if they are wearing African mask. By 1907, a time when this painting was created, Picasso had started collecting similar work. Even the striations representing scarification is obvious. Although Matisse and Derain had an immense standing interest when it came to such art, Picasso asserted that it was after wandering to the Palais du Trocadero ethnographic museum found in Paris, which he understood the worth of such art. France was a chief colonial power within Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries; as a result, most of the African art was slit from its initial geographic, as well as artistic context and sold within Paris. Even if Picasso eventually became more sophisticated concerning the original uses and significance of the non-Western painting which he assembled, in 1907 his fascination was largely rooted on what he supposed as its strange and aggressive features.9 In spite of the Les Demoiselles DAvignon being clear about Picasso’s own desire, it is also an illustration of his terror. We have already ascertained that Picasso visited brothels at this time; therefore, his desire is not in question, this happens to be half of the story. Additionally, Les Demoiselles DAvignon portrays Picassos intense terror...his fear of these women or disease that he was afraid they were capable of transmitting to him. At a time when antibiotics were not yet discovered, contracting syphilis happened to be a well founded fear. Certainly, the plight of these women appears not to penetrate into Picassos story.10 Bibliography Andersen, Wayne. Picassos brothel: les demoiselles dAvignon. Michigan: Other Press, 2002. Christopher Green, Pablo Picasso. Picasso: Architecture and Vertigo. Chicago: Yale University Press, 2005. Fichner-Rathus, Lois. Foundations of Art & Design: An Enhanced Media Edition. New Jersey: Cengage Learning, 2011. Green, Christopher. Picassos Les demoiselles dAvignon. London: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Helen Gardner, Fred S. Kleiner. Gardners Art Through the Ages: The Western Perspective, Volume 2. Virginia : Cengage Learning, 2010. Read More