| It is not easy to be confronted with the painting of a master. It is unsettling. It unnerves one. It may even bring tears to the eyes. How can one look at Picassoís Les Demoiselles DíAvignon and not reexamine oneís notion of art? Forget traditional concepts of art. Ignore ideas of beauty and harmony. |
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Picassoís Demoiselles díAvignon at 100 by Harriet Zinnes
It is not easy to be confronted with the painting of a master. It is unsettling. It unnerves one. It may even bring tears to the eyes. How can one look at Picassoís Les Demoiselles DíAvignon and not reexamine oneís notion of art? Forget traditional concepts of art. Ignore ideas of beauty and harmony. As John Elderfield, the curator at the Museum of Modern Art writes, ìIn looking back over the past one hundred years, there has never been a work that so changed the course of modern or contemporary art. It became apparent to artists who had at first scoffed at it that this painting had changed everything. And of course the painting created significantly the style of Cubism.
The exhibition, which will continue at MoMA through August 27, 2007, is a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the creation of Picassoís masterpiece.The Spanish artist (1881-1973) worked diligently over this painting. He made hundreds of sketches and preparatory studies for months before he arrived at his final version in the summer of 1907. It was not viewed calmly even by such artists as Henri Matisse and Andre Derain.
They scoffed at it, we are told, or even laughed at it. It was referred to as The Philosophical Brothel. ìPhilosophicalî seems to stretch a point when one looks at a work influenced by Iberian sculpture from the artistís native Spain with its facial asymmetry, heavy-lidded and lozenge-shaped eyes, and curling enlarged ears. The women on the right of the painting with their frightening and strange masks hardly lead to a philosophical resolution.
Philosophical or not, this painting of prostitutes certainly changed the calmer traditions of art.
One should look closely not only at the eight-foot-square canvas but also at the sketches and preparatory studies. Picasso produced hundreds after making those studies in the winter of l906-07. Whether it is the Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery) that the artist worked on in the summer of l907 or the Female Torso with Large Ear that Picasso conceived in Paris during May-June 1907, what is revealed is an artist whose concentration and amazing discipline would astonish viewers for years to come.
