The day modern art was invented: Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon
In the summer of 1906, Pablo Picasso retreated from Paris to a village in the Spanish Pyrenees. Had he died there, he would be remembered as a gifted symbolist, painter of pink and blue harlequins. But, says his biographer John Richardson,"there in the isolation of a mountain wilderness the artist, who sometimes chose to identify with Christ, decided that his time had come. He was finally ready to establish that he - as opposed to Matisse - would be the Mahdi of modern art."
During the next year, working in solitude, Picasso flung his energy, knowledge and courage into 800 studies for"Les demoiselles d'Avignon". No painting has ever been so weightily considered, so lengthily elaborated, so consciously created in order to turn art on its axis. Even if Picasso had died in 1907, he would still be remembered as the founder of modern art.
Yet when he showed the painting his avant-garde friends, it was so revolutionary that they all fell silent or, like Matisse, brayed with defensive laughter. Picasso rolled up the canvas and kept it in his studio like some illicit lover. There were no possible buyers. In 1916 the painting made a brief excursion to a private salon organised by Salmon, who prudishly changed the name from"Le bordel d'Avignon" to"Les demoiselles". It was not exhibited again until 1937; two years later New York's Museum of Modern Art bought it and, almost instantly, private masterpiece became public icon. [Image and caption at MOMA here.]
Related Links
Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon Turns 100 (NPR, audio)