Les Demoiselles D Avignon Essay

When one thinks about approach, words like method, creation, and technique come to mind. The different approaches to the creation of art were reflected in the variety of artistic movements that defined the period between 1900 and 1980. Two different pieces that encompass varied approaches to art are Les Demoiselles d’Avignon by Pablo Picasso and Fountain by Marcel Duchamp. Both of these works are largely influential in the span of modern art for their innovation in representation and method of depiction. Pablo Picasso is perhaps one of the principal artists that pioneered Cubism during the twentieth century— Cubists disregarded the traditional notion of perspective and principally relied on the abstraction of form. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) is a staple piece in the progression of cubism, abstracting a scene of 5 prostitutes, standing in a somewhat circular formation, in a variety of different poses. The foreground and background work in unison to mask what would comprise any negative space so a viewer is able to recognize that the subjects depicted are women, albeit abstracted in the approach of their creation. A pillar of cubism is representing different points of view on a two dimensional surface, and Picasso did so very carefully by depicting the woman in the middle in such a way that it seems as if the audience is seeing her from above. Some critics of abstraction claim that the work is infantile and requires no talent, but Picasso underwent through various meticulous sketches before deciding on the final painting, demonstrating his approach of planned execution. The lines, forms, and colors are all intentional and deliberate— and are used to stress the most important aspects of the women: the breasts, the eyes and the forms of their bodies. The background is subsidiary to the forms of the bodies of the women and their placement in relation to each other, and to the viewer. An additional element of the painting is the artist’s inclusion of the peculiar African masks on the two women on the right which is most …show more content…
Although the group didn’t outright reject it, Duchamp’s ‘sculpture’ was hidden during the gallery because the curators had difficulty accepting it as art. By then, Duchamp was already creating what he called ‘readymades’, in which commonplace objects would be minimally altered and displayed as art. These creations challenged the concept of retinal art— art that was purely reliant on visuals or aesthetics— and helped establish the artist’s spot as one of the forefront artists of the Dada movement. The pang of nihilism due to the first world war accompanied by the rise of cubism thanks to Picasso and Braque, brought forth the new movement of Dadaism, which opposed the artistic standard of the time by principally challenging what was to be considered art. This challenge altered the approach of careful planning and executing that artists had cherished since the beginning of time. The piece, simply a ceramic urinal turned on its side with a sloppily-signed ‘R. Mutt’ in black paint, inherently differed from the rest of the art displayed at the beginning of the 20th century. “The onlooker has the last word, and it is always posterity that makes the masterpiece.” Duchamp once stated, in describing his renowned work. The Fountain is principally significant for its non representational nature, which opposes the abstraction used by Picasso in Les