My visit to the Museum of Modern Art was an amazing experience. I saw many paintings that are world-class. I saw the Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh, one of the most famous paintings to exist. Because it was not in the allotted time-frame of the assignment, I chose the next-most captivating painting, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon by Pablo Picasso.
Pablo Picasso was a Spanish painter, sculptor, ceramist, stage designer, and the co-creator of Cubism. He is renowned for the ability to keep reinventing himself and his craft, his works over time drastically changed and it may appear to some that they would have been done by separate artists, not one.
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon was created in 1907 and is an oil on canvass. It was acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest in 1939 by exchange. This probably meant that the Museum of Modern Art had a deal or a trade with the Bequest for this painting. It depicts 4 prostitutes in a brothel in Avignon. It draws influences from African tribal masks and Spanish Renaissance artist El Greco.
The aesthetic of this painting is related to modernism because the evokes a new sense of style of painting that was drastically different from the conventional paintings at that time. Pablo used shapes alluding to sharp edges and curves to illustrate a scene. Although this artwork was made up entirely of geometric-like shapes, people were able to see that the human figures in the painting, 5 nude people. This can be considered a modernistic approach because it is a unique expression and technique people were not used to. Shapes made the painting, instead of the stroke of the brush or the traditional ways to paint an image. The painting reminded me of paper mache but in 2-D instead of 3-d. Another interesting point is that conventional paintings had depth and realism to the people, but he made it extremely abstract and modernistic by transcending the common “thinking” of that time period.
In a large room that housed the Starry Night, there was an entrance that connected to another room. On the wall of the adjacent room was the biggest painting I had seen in the Museum. This painting drew me in because of its size, color, and unconventional style. It was interesting that he used shapes to piece together the human figure, I thought that the irregular shapes of the artwork made it drastically unique.
One question I had about this work is why Pablo used the Cubanism to illustrate the nudity of men/women. Would it have been easier to just paint people in the more conventional way?
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79766
Devin, You have chosen a very well-known, important work by Picasso. When he first exhibited “Les Desmoiselles d’Avignon,” it was considered quite scandalous for a variety of reasons – because he painted prostitutes, because they were naked, and because of the strange, new style he used in this painting. You are right to pay attention to the painting’s use of geometric shapes; that’s part of why it’s called “Cubism.” Picasso said that he was drawing people as he saw them – rather than relying on a conventional idea of what a portrait of a person should look like. Nice job.
JS