ABSTRACT
Completed by Picasso around 1907, this picture, 'Les Demoiselles d' Avignon', is a foundational text in the modernist canon, shocking the viewer at every turn. The quattrocento tradition, the dominant form of Western art, carefully built up a convention in which objects were represented in linear perspective: in Picasso's work the face of the figure
bottom right, squatting on a bidet, is portrayed simultaneously from the front and from the side, an effect that shatters the tradition (as does the modelling of the bodies in general). This face and that of the one top right recall African masks, breaching any opposition between 'civilized' Europe and a 'barbaric' world outside. While the mainstream tradition had represented women as passive objects (generally naked, generally recumbent) who demurely return the viewer's gaze, these women (visibly shown as prostitutes) stare back with eyes that refuse to submit to any controlling look. Picasso's painting marks out a positive assertion that the past is dead, a false appearance, and that a new truth and different ways of painting must be found.
