What Makes Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon Perhaps the Most Revolutionary Painting of the 20th Century?

"Prac­ti­cal­ly any­one could take one glance at Les Demoi­selles d'Av­i­gnon and iden­ti­fy it as a Picas­so, even if they've nev­er seen it before and could­n't say any­thing else about it. That alone goes some way to explain­ing why the paint­ing would end up ranked as the most impor­tant art­work of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, at least accord­ing to a study by Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go econ­o­mist David W. Galen­son. For that title it beat out the likes of Robert Smith­son's Spi­ral Jet­ty, Richard Hamil­ton's Just what is it that makes today's homes so dif­fer­ent, so appeal­ing?, Mar­cel Ducham­p's and Nude Descend­ing a Stair­case, No. 2, and Picas­so's own Guer­ni­ca."

"With Les Demoi­selles d'Av­i­gnon, Galen­son writes, "the great­est artist of the cen­tu­ry ini­ti­at­ed the century's most impor­tant artis­tic move­ment. Art schol­ars debate whether the Demoi­selles should be con­sid­ered a Cubist paint­ing, but there is no ques­tion that it dif­fered pro­found­ly from all of the art that pre­ced­ed it, and that it began the devel­op­ment of Cubism.""

"Paint­ed in ambi­tious response to Hen­ri Matis­se's Le Bon­heur de vivre, its rejec­tion of tra­di­ti­on­al for­mal­i­ty and beau­ty shocked even Picas­so's for­ward-think­ing col­leagues: "Not only did Matisse denounce the paint­ing as an attempt to dis­cred­it mod­ern art, but even Georges Braque, who would lat­er join forces with Picas­so in devel­op­ing Cubism, was ini­tial­ly so shocked by the paint­ing that he com­pared Picas­so to the fair­ground fire-eaters who drank kerosene to spit flames.""

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is instantly recognizable as a Picasso and reshaped twentieth-century art. The painting was ranked as the most important artwork of the twentieth century, beating works such as Spiral Jetty, Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, and Guernica. The work initiated the development of Cubism by departing radically from previous artistic conventions. Its rejection of traditional form and beauty shocked contemporaries. Henri Matisse denounced the painting, and Georges Braque initially reacted with extreme alarm. Picasso painted it in ambitious response to Henri Matisse's Le Bonheur de vivre.

Read at Open Culture