Pablo Picasso and the Painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon - Essay Example

Argumentative Essay Pablo Picasso and the painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is one of the famous canvas art works of Pablo Picasso. Pablo Picasso is recognized as one of the greatest painters of the 20th century. During his early times, people believed that Pablo possessed natural artistic abilities. Pablo created many highly artistic paintings and drawings during his childhood and teenage years. His inspiration to draw and paint is thought to have emanated from his father who was a skilled artist and a prominent Draughtsman. His works and those of Braque lead to the formation of the artist movement famously known as Cubism. The artistic life of Pablo was very productive exhibiting new styles and concepts. His oil paintings and other art works like sculpture exhibit several artistic concepts and styles. This is because at his time he experimented with several artistic concepts and styles. His paintings were evolutionary and depicted innovative concepts. The painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is an oil painting that has models of prostitutes of a red-light district in the city of Barcelona, Spain. The prostitutes are five and are almost naked. Their faces are sharp and angular and two of the ladies have tribal masks that give them a different persona. Pablo did not use the classical way of painting but rather used the revolutionary way of art. The painting is part of a permanent exhibition in the New York Museum of Modern Art. The painting measures 243.9cm by 233.7cm. The art work was finished in the summer of 1907 and was publicly exhibited in the year 1916 (ArtsMyPassion 1). Interpretation of the Pablo Picasso’s painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon The painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon was unveiled in the year 1907 by Pablo Picasso. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is a French phrase and it means The Young Ladies of Avignon. The period the painting was unveiled is known as the Rose Period. Before painting the picture, Pablo had studied the works of Liberian and African artists in the Parisian galleries and museums. The use of masks appealed him because of their angular features and simplicity and he believed that these features were beyond time and culture. The picture depicts the time and period in which the women worked and lived. The picture shows five prostitutes from a red-light district brothel in Barcelona, Spain. A key contrast in the picture is that it the female forms do not show any signs of femininity. The outline of the female forms is rectilinear and harsh thus making the forms look straighter. Such forms are not found in nature. The female forms in the picture show no expression and they lack identity. Some of the women have masks in their faces. The human forms in this picture are transformed into geometrical shapes and Pablo is believed to be the pioneer of cubism (Fichner-Rathus 54). Significance of the picture The picture is named after a red-light district in Barcelona, Spain. It began as a brothel with a sailor seated amongst naked women and within it a student holding a skull. These features were later removed by Picasso and its intended significance of eroticism was given a new dimension. The new dimension given to the picture was that of the five female forms. Eroticism was more elaborate in the original and the latter picture. Picasso opts for sexual freedom in a brothel and this is well depicted in the picture. The inspiration to draw the picture was drawn from various sources. The sources are Cezanne and Iberian sculptures. African art opened his way of viewing the world visually. The African art according to Picasso was entirely dependent on knowing things other than seeing them and it was more structured than the Western art. The picture’s significance is its revolutionary work of art that deviates from the Western conventions of art. The piece of art brings in a new dimension to treatment of form and space. The painting also revives the use of unexpressed state of mind and emotions in the representational of art. . The painting of five women in their naked forms grouped around a motionless life portrays a lot, with respect to classical convention. The foreground being serene against a background of decomposed figures shows a relationship between the painting and Renaissance tradition. The canvas on which the painting is done looks like a field of shattered glass. The picture’s message is perceived to have originated from the reaction against illusionistic aesthetic and civilized refinement of Impressionism (Fleming and Honour 781). The originality of his vision of the painting comes from cubism, a new revolutionary art movement. The idea of cubism was developed further with the help of another painter called George Braque. The painting is a masterpiece of modern art. The use of African mask to disguise is correlated to modernism as wearing a mask, it shows no meaning and it is a wall that hides what is behind it. Picasso wanted to show that art does lie in the traditional way of thinking but lies within formal invention. The use of cubism erases any meaning or narrative. The use of visual violence brings out his eroticism (Jones 1). Critics View on the Painting The painting is labeled immoral with some relating it with prostitution and this has caused uproar amongst critics. The painting is still viewed by many people as shocking and controversial. Some artists believe that the painting is incomplete and shows that the artist is undecided in what to do. Although this was so at that time, modern critics do not view the painting as immoral. The arguments posted by those who hold this belief arises from the fact that the forms are dislocated, unfinished and clearly inconsistent in style. Many still believe that the picture depicted soft porn. They say that Picasso may have gone to a brothel and painted the women and to disguise them, he made them pretty ugly. However, Pablo was able to get away from this controversy with a completely different painting much later. Other critics like Yves-Alain Bois find the presence of trauma in the picture and this opens the way into the exploration of psychoanalysis. Many agree the picture brings together feminist, psychological, historical and postcolonial perspectives that are significant to the 20th century work. Most postcolonial critics argue that the use of visual logics in painting have mystified and obscured other native, oriental and primitive cultures in the Western art. They argue that many cultures that are not Western has long being neglected and their presence even in pieces of art ignored. Picasso’s painting and other paintings that employ the use of cubism have brought about a new revolution against the ills of the West (Harrington 50). According to some critics, the issue of gender plays an insignificant role in the interpretation of the painting. What really matters in the painting is the way the human figure is drawn. The human form is painted in an African way and yet without following a specific model. Many critics believe that the African influence in the painting originated from his visit to Paris anthropological museum Musee d’Ethnographie. Pablo had seen several collections of African tribal masks in the museum. Conclusion Les Demoiselles d Avignon by Picasso marked a great breakthrough in modern art according to many critics. This is in reference to the fact that the central figures reveal the time in which the painting was started while the nude figures that frame it show a change of mind which is greatly important to Cubism. It is believed that Picasso was rebellious and sought to destroy Western art from the time of early Renaissance. Works Cited ArtsMyPassion. “Les Demoiselles dAvignon – Pablo Picasso.” ArtsMyPassion. Web. 16 Nov. 2010. < http://www.artsmypassion.com/articles.asp?ID=270 > Fichner-Rathus, Lois. Foundations of Art and Design. Florence, KY: Cengage Learning, 2007. Print. Fleming, J. & Honour, H. A World History of Art. London, UK: Laurence King Publishing, 2005. Print. Harrington, Austin. Sociological Arguments in Aesthetics. Cambridge UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2004. Print. Jones, Jonathan. “Pablo’s Punks.” The Guardian 9 Jan. 2007: 1. Print. Read More