Friday, October 29, 2010

Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (The Women Of Avignon)

On exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art is one of Pablo Picasso's well-known painting, "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," ("The Women of Avignon"; Paris, June-July 1907. Oil on canvas, 8' x 7' 8"). Photo was taken on October 29, 2010.

MoMA gallery caption:

The result of months of preparation and revision, this painting revolutionized the art world when first seen in Picasso's studio. Its monumental size underscored the shocking incoherence resulting from the outright sabotage of conventional representation. Picasso drew on sources as diverse as Iberian sculpture, African tribal masks, and El Greco's painting to make this startling composition. In the preparatory studies, the figure at left was a sailor entering a brothel. Picasso, wanting no anecdotal detail to interfere with the sheer impact of the work, decided to eliminate it in the final painting. The only remaining allusion to the brothel lies in the title: Avignon was a street in Barcelona famed for its brothel.

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