June 11, 2007
Perceptions: One hundred years of modern art
Pablo Picasso. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. 1907.
Jonathan Jones in The Guardian:
Modernism in the arts is 100 years old, because Pablo Picasso's painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is now 100 years old. In 1907, the Titanic had yet to sink, cinema was a flickering newsreel of the Boer war, Scott of the Antarctic was still alive and the Wright brothers travelled to Europe to publicise their invention of powered flight. San Francisco was still shattered by the previous year's earthquake. But in a crowded, dilapidated warren of artists' and writers' studios on the Parisian hill of Montmartre, home to anarchy and cabaret, a 25-year-old Spanish immigrant was creating the first, and greatest, masterpiece of modern art.
Posted by Sughra Raza at 12:03 AM | Permalink
Comments
it's a good article, and the piece on the restoration certainly adds breadth and depth, but are you aware that you have linked it before, in January when it was first published?
I think you were just testing us, your loyal readers, to see if we'd notice....:)
Posted by: olivia b | Jun 11, 2007 3:23:31 AM
Olivia B, congratulations! You have passed our test with flying... Okay, maybe not!
Even I enjoyed this post and had forgotten that I myself had posted this six months ago here, so over a thousand posts later, Sughra can't be blamed too much!
Posted by: Abbas Raza | Jun 11, 2007 9:54:53 AM
Dear Olivia and Abbas,
indeed I'm impressed and appreciative of Olivia's careful perusal of 3QD.
There actually is reason to post this now, as it was not until the summer of 1907 that Picasso completed this painting. It was exhibited years later.
Here are a couple of other interesting articles:
http://www1.uol.com.br/bienal/23bienal/especial/iepi.htm
http://www.thecityreview.com/matpic.html
Posted by: Sughra | Jun 11, 2007 10:45:40 AM
I recently visited the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, which concentrates mainly on his early work, before 'Demoiselles'. The beauty and energy of his work (from the age of 8 or so) is truly astounding. The museum has 3-4 rooms filled just with works he created when he was 15. I came to really apreciate what he meant when shown paintings by kids from a kindergarden: " When I was their age I painted like Rafael, it's taken me my whole life to learn to paint like a child."
Posted by: aguy109 | Jun 12, 2007 2:00:39 AM
With "Les Demoiselles..." Picasso had that feeling he was creating the masterpiece that would divide his life even before he started painting it: he lined the canvas with a layer of linen gauze before he stretched it, the better to head off the disastrous interaction of wooden stretchers and unprimed canvas that would have discolored and weakened the edges of his image over the passage of time, about a hundred years of time, actually.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jun 12, 2007 9:58:16 AM
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