Les Demoiselles D Vignon

Painted in 1907, Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles D’Vignon was considered the first Cubist painting during a time where new, modern techniques were not yet appreciated in the arts world (Chave, 1994). Though recognized, the painting was still seen as mad. Picasso violated tradition art conventions through “devitalization of the human form, disuse of illusionistic space and deployment of a mixture of visual idioms” (Steefel, 1992, p.115). Every violation comes together to make a new, modern form of art known as Cubism. Picasso creates a new way of looking at the world through his Cubist works, and with Les Demoiselles, forces every viewer of the piece to look upon this seemingly broken and unfamiliar world.

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is, as Anna Chave explains it, “an explosion triggered by five nudes who force their eroticized flesh upon us [the viewer] with a primal attack” (1994, p.597). The five nudes of the painting are prostitutes, a stereotypically lower class and
Picasso paints jagged plains that lacerate torsos and limbs, and flowing curtains are blocked and chopped into rough patterns (Steefel, 1992). The painting is charged with a violent sort of electricity that shatters the world. The shattered pieces are matte, thick areas of color. At first glance anyone can notice that this painting does not follow realistic conventions. The women’s bodies are not like traditional realistic nudes. They are not in modest positions with soft bodies but in provocative stances of flashing themselves, with thick bodies coming to harsh points. Their bodies aren’t even a whole, they are shattered like the curtain of the background, and painted by block. A realistic representation of this scene would be comparable to looking at a photograph, though the figures, background and fruit of the scene are not of the same