Understanding the Significance of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon acts as a politically, artistically and visually ground-breaking piece that critics continue to analyse in depth. Picasso takes a radical break from traditional compositional techniques and works in a politically left, anarchist vein as a result from French colonial politics in 1905-6. Contextually this meant that his work was already fully charged with political meaning; which leant towards making Les Demoiselles hugely significant within the art world and established itself as the forefront of Cubism. In this essay I will focus on Les Demoiselles significance through the lenses of race and gender, particularly focussing on the idea that the art itself, acts as a result of attempts to subvert western ideals in order to establish itself as anarchist modernist’ art. This essay will try to uncover the modernist attempts at demolishing a reductive view arguing against French Colonial exploitation, whilst paradoxically considering “Africa the embodiment of humankind in a pre-civilised state” and by “preferring to mystify rather than to examine its presumed idol-worship and violent rituals”. [1] The racial and political dialogue that underpins Les Demoiselles d’Avignon holds extreme significance, not only within the intentions and aims of Picasso but to the transformation of modernism and the avant-garde art produced in France in 1907. It is perhaps wise to firstly highlight the colonial exploitation that surrounded Picasso and the group of artists that he interacted with. The political activity within France in the time in which Les Demoiselles was created, triggered many significant factors when analysing the image. The colonial exploitation at the time, bought African art and such ideals into the view of French culture and this was soon to be appropriated and formed into indulgent idealised images of a “primitive” [2]state.

The image of Africa that was created by the modernist circle within pre-World War 1 France, heavily idealised and merged the many cultures within Africa into one unanimous depiction. The assumption of African Culture evolved around the anxiety and hyperbole of mystic tribal masks and heavily sexualised African figures. Such mysterious and foreign images were circulating France, which allowed cultural appropriation and became the starting point of many racist caricatures. This particular movement of appropriation of the African culture was identified by Patricia Leighton writer of “The White Peril and L'Art negre: Picasso, Primitivism, and Anticolonialism” as “Primal Spiritism”. [3]She identifies that with the alliance of Africa, artists such as Picasso, took inspiration from its brutal colonial history and morphed the image of Africa into an image of mysticism and violence. In 1905 to 1906, the political left responded to the abuse against the indigenous people in the French and Belgian Congo’s and this course of events triggered allusions to the mysterious, unknown and brutal image representations of “Africa” and its people. Paintings like Picasso’s Les Demoiselles were created, arguably as a response to the political and historical activity at the time and were perhaps a social criticism of colonial exploitation by the somewhat anarchist avant-garde artists. Of course it would be daft to forget that the lust for creating a new mode of art that induces shock reactions and exotic ideals was apparent too. Picasso strived for what Leighton claims was a “self-conscious undermining of French tradition” [4]and this led to the discovery of appropriating cultures, not just African but also the Iberian style in 1905-1906. It was by this time that Picasso had transformed his work into the realms of Cubism which was seen to be crude as it emphasised the two-dimensional flatness of the canvas.

At this point in his creative outset, Picasso had also already formed works that were influenced by the Barcelona modernists and was inspired to introduce more alien and unknown cultures into his work, this began by appropriating Iberian culture in 1906. The left wing avant-gardism in pre-World War 1 Paris, became the culprit of the altering of the modern art produced in 1905-1906. It was then by 1907 that Picasso started to ‘primitivise’ his art. The anarchist modernists’ aim in appropriating Africanism was intended to critique western civilisation by glamorising a respectable “Primitivism” and by “Embracing an imagined ‘primitiveness’ of Africans whose ‘authenticity’ they opposed to a ‘decadent’ West.” [5]This is a key point when considering Les Demoiselles as social comment for Picasso. This modernisation within his work is best understood as a desire to subvert western artistic traditions whilst appropriating the mysticism of a largely imagined primitive state.

There were two colonies that were particularly significant in creating the mysticism and barbarism that Picasso incorporates within his appropriation of African art and within Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. The first colony being the Dahomey which resided in West Africa. This colony was apparent in inspiring mystical absurdities and spiritualisms that were also caricatured or portrayed using the tribal masks and figurines. The second colony contrasted with French and Belgian Congo’s in West Africa and this influenced the white colonialists and systematic destruction of tribal life that Picasso was so averse to. The political context behind Les Demoiselles also becomes imperative in challenging the artistic tradition that Picasso was so used to abiding by.

The figures within Les Demoiselles show the savage nature that was assumed as normative behaviour from African culture at the time. Leighton astutely writes: “They mock such sexual display and, as ‘Africanized’ figures, aggressively challenge the ‘bankrupt’ Western artistic tradition. Africa, as imported into the work, represents not an idyllic, pre-European society, but the very opposite of ‘civilized’ Europe and, as such, a threat to it.” [6] Picasso’s political viewpoint of protecting such indigenous colonies is somewhat contradictory as it is overpowered by an interest in seeing the worst, appropriating vital features of the colonies, and by using his western power to publicise such construed images. Picasso identifies the exploitation of these figures whilst romanticising and appropriating tribal features and exploiting such shock ideals within his work; through this Les Demoiselles d’Avignon resulted in being the most shocking artistic act within such a politically vigorous time.

Picassos some-what shocking depiction of brutal colonial history combined with a desire to portray such mysterious primal spirituality (gained from the Dahomey and the French and Belgian Congos) aligned with what was seen as savagery. This combination of the mystic and the savage, was then made even more complex with the use of the exploited; a group of seemingly white figured prostitutes. This supposed new and modernist’, and somewhat anarchist and political painting becomes a repetitive exploitation of two highly fetishized ideals: the “primitive” and the “prostitute”. This strategy of “anarchist critique-by-inversion” [7]becomes almost paradoxical. Whilst attempting to reach the contemporary avant-garde, Picasso arguably subverts back to traditional westernised political, moral and social order. Not only this, but he falls back into a reductive standpoint of artistic order as well, exploiting the female form and the foreign. Whilst supposedly attempting to subvert western ideals of art, the paintings crude symbolist and flattened cubist forms, contradict with the modernists' outrage at the colonial satires on black Africa. The horror induced by the mystic tribal masks, not only romanticises the ideals of the violent savage, but alienates and threatens the viewer. As Leighton puts forward, “The complex interweaving of the ideas and events forms an important part of the dense and sophisticated fabric of associations that Les Demoiselles d’Avignon summoned up at the time for the circle to whom Picasso showed it.”[8]

As well as looking at Les Demoiselles as a piece that is heavily laden with racial implications, it is important to observe this piece through the lenses of both gender and race combined. Les Demoiselles takes the form of an eroticised exotic group of prostituted female figures. By using the term exotic, I not only mean the figures faces covered with African tribal masks but also, the concept of identifying this group of women as prostitutes. Les Demoiselles would have been predominantly aimed at the white, heterosexual male viewer. This is an important contextual point that bears a lot of significance; within modernist art to feature a woman poised in the position of a femme fatale or the raunchy prostitute, was not uncommon. This was a particularly modernist’ and symbolic approach, as it tested and subverted the cultural and social boundaries that were within the art scene at the time. Such an avant-garde breaking of boundaries would surely exhibit traits of modernism itself, but Picasso’s Les Demoiselles is an example of more than just modernist provocation. In Anna C Chave’s text, New Encounters with Les Demoiselles d'Avignon: Gender, Race, and the Origins of Cubism, she points out that the women serve as “the very grounds of representation, both object and support of a desire which, intimately bound up with power and creativity is the moving force of culture and history”. [9]By not only attempting to subvert western ideals, with the use of tribal masks and highly eroticised figures, Picasso diligently reminds us that there is a larger boundary between the audience and the piece of work; one that is formed racially, sexually, and through gender and class.

A separation between the viewer and the painting occurs firstly with the use of the tribal masks- assuming this viewer is a heterosexual white male audience in 1907- the masked nude prostitutes signify a threatening sexual boundary and mystery. Chave states that the use of prostitution “marks the indelible social boundary between the sexes: between men, who can routinely contract for the sexual services of women, and women, who have never had a comparable opportunity”. [10]However, the figures in Les Demoiselles do not at all look vulnerable, instead they have stances of power, and an almost predatory allure to them. Picassos subverts the ideals of classical themes of vulnerability or sexual innocence that was often used and these figures within Les Demoiselles perform quite the opposite; “The radical treatment of the traditional idealized nude female announces the end of the old world of art with a new, staggering violence”.[11] The female form staged in such a threatening way, dictating what would be seen as an excess of sexuality and most importantly masked, portrays aggression and in some cases makes the viewer fearful or anxious. The context of prostitution and these figures having belonged to some sort of brothel displayed for to the male viewer, again identifies Picasso’s staggering awareness of exploitation and the appropriation of it. Whilst seemingly exploiting the exploited in Les Demoiselles, the figures animalistic sexual display is not only entrancing but threatens its viewer with the concept of eroticising of the exotic.

From the figure at the front of the image, squatting and almost mocking the viewers with her backside, we can identify confidence within the figures obvious sexual nature. Picasso’s figures do not look ashamedly vulnerable, instead, they flaunt the lines that he has given them and exude mystifying confidence. Contextually, of course, the idea of a woman being outwardly vocal or confident with her sexuality, was a threat to society in general. The fear of a prostitute that would’ve been openly brazen with her body would’ve been anxiety inducing for both men and women. For a woman to be owning the space in which they were granted, would’ve been hard to imagine. The primitivism and the sexual display from these figures are divided into what seems like two parts. The two paler figures making direct eye contact with the viewer, with a hypnotic yet empty gaze, and another two figures with heads imposed on by the tribal masks. On the outskirts, another two figures staring more menacingly at these two almost (despite their facial expression) femme fatales with their arms behind their heads. The figure crouching, in my opinion, intrigues me the most. It is as if her back is to the viewer, yet her tribal mask has fully rotated to face the front connecting directly with viewer. The directness of this mask puts these figures in a confused position of power almost mocking all those that view them with horror. The violence and the threat of such an eroticised exotic image clearly became a thrill to Picasso, but undoubtedly, he manipulates this thrill and intrigue into the appropriation of African and colonial exploitation. The appropriation of the tribal masks used on the female figures act as a masquerade. This is largely reminiscent of the racist caricatures that he observed that involved similar uses of these Africanised exotic figures and tribal masks. Rather distastefully, the appropriation and mimicry of such sacred and powerful symbols belonging to the African culture reminds us of Picasso’s racial, gender and class privileges and puts him in the ultimate position of power and control; “Mimicry is an act of appropriation and one of the most elusive and effective strategies of colonial power and knowledge”. [12]

The cubist techniques and flattening of the pictorial space, announces two-dimensionality when using these sexualised female forms. As Steinberg says in The Philosophical Brothel, “this is an interior space in compression like the inside of pleated bellow, like the feel of an inhabited pocket, a contracting sheath heated by the massed human presence'. [13]It is important that as well as understanding Les Demoiselles as a loaded political piece; it’s flattened cubist techniques show a determination to truly make a dramatic emphasis on radical changes in techniques. By creating an element of horror with in female prostituted form, this not only shows a fear of such excessive sexuality, but a fear of the exotic and unknown objectified in a sexually open female form. Les demoiselles is hugely significant in marking the movement of cubism coming into the fore of the art world, whilst being ground-breaking in displaying the exploited and proving Primitivism to be the result of such exploitation and appropriation. Les Demoiselles problematized the notion of the aesthetics and startled its viewers with its new forms of representation. Not only this, but by representing the exploited female and tribal appropriation, Les Demoiselles provides us with a contextual glimpse into Picasso’s far left politically anarchist ideals. His appropriation of African cultures, made way to argue his attempt to radicalise art and celebrate the unknown and mysterious. However, through the exploitation of both race and gender, Leighton and Chave both argue that Picasso subverts back to traditional westernised political, moral and social order, taking his power and objectifying and appropriating a culture and identity that isn’t his own.