The Ladies Of Avignon By Pablo Picasso

The ladies of Avignon by Pablo Picasso

The work I am going to analyze is the ladies of Avignon, by the Spanish artist Pablo Ruiz Picasso. The canvas, made in 1907, is within the artistic current known as Cubism that originated in the twentieth century and was created to break with the prohibitions and superstitions of Western art and the Renaissance paradigm.

Before starting with the analysis of the work I must make a stop to explain the social-political context in which Cubism arises. The times before World War I were wonderful in Paris, since it was in one of its best moments recognized as the capital of luxury, pleasure and distraction. First of all this glamor the citizens of the capital were divided by problems and disagreements. For reasons such as capitalism, social problems became worse and ran into a working class introduced in socialist currents and with women in full feminist movement. The rapid evolution of the capital attacked rural industries. On the other hand, Cottington (1999) states that "in the meantime, international competition for colonial possessions and markets gave a spirit of nationalism that, (…), inexorably led to the conflagration of 1914" (P.6). This situation resulted in the origin of artistic avant -garde and many young people felt adherence to this city so influential and modern in artistic terms. In this context, the cubism that intends as I have mentioned before breaking with the prohibitions and superstitions of Western art arose.

Cubism shows a new vision of the total space on the canvas that, as Paoletta (2011) says “that will no longer be organized through the central perspective, but each individual object will be reproduced from several visual angles” (P.259). Therefore, cubism is a movement in which the vision of the traditional disappears and treats issues connected to nature through geometric figures causing a central point of view and without a sense of depth.

Regarding the ladies of Avignon, it is a magnificent and unusual work that makes clear Picasso’s rebel spirit against the academic protocol and the preferences and inclinations of bourgeois society. In the work it shows five daring prostitutes and completely without clothes. We can appreciate that three of them have a face and conventional figure unlike the other two whose face appears completely disfigured resembling a monster rather than a woman. The five women are looking at the viewer, the picture has no depth is completely flat.

Both the figure and the face of the woman is constituted from geometric figures.

Even over time this work is still disturbing the viewer for the hardness with which the woman’s body and sexuality is exposed and really attracts attention, as after the Renaissance aesthetics of the time Picasso dares to do such a work modern and outgoing that positions the viewer in an awkward situation, away from what was predetermined as art at that time. However, another factor that makes it shocking is that the women represented in this work were not wealthy women, but were women rejected by society completely naked and with a penetrating look that as I mentioned before provoking in the viewer a sensation of a feeling of discomfort to see her and therefore rejection for that reason did not come to light until decades later.

In conclusion, the ladies of Avignon are an absolutely revolutionary work that breaks with all the Renaissance paradigms and with the predetermined norms of the time and is a breath of fresh air for the society of the years XX.