ABSTRACT
What was "the amazing act upon which all the art of our century is built"? What is "the most innovative painting since Giotto," the " 'harbinger comet of the new century,' " the very "paradigm of all modern art," no less? 1 What is the modern art-historical equivalent of the Greatest Story Ever Told? What else but the monumental Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (color plate 12) painted by Picasso in 1907? Six years ago, this single painting, "probably the first truly twentieth-century painting," occasioned a major exhibition at the Musée Picasso in Paris commemorated by a ponderous two-volume catalogue. 2 The director of the department of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York swore he would kill himself if the plane transporting the work to that event were to crash. 3 What can account for such hyperbole, for such an unparalleled fixation on a particular picture?
