Masterpiece or Monstrosity?: Controversies about Modern Art

This search led Picasso to incorporate several different styles

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The two women in the middle are perhaps the most classically painted figures, but are still broken down and simplified into shapes. They are similar in stance to C&eacutezanne and Henri Matisse figures in paintings such as C&eacutezanne's Five Bathers and Matisse's Le Bonheur de vivre. The two women on the right are further abstracted. Their bodies are contorted and not easily recognized as human forms.

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By incorporating African art directly into a Western painting "Picasso purposely challenged and mocked Western artistic traditions with his allusions to black Africa, with its unavoidable associations of white cruelty and exploitation."

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One style that Picasso explored and used in Demoiselles, was "primitivism." In early 1906, Picasso saw an exhibition of Osuna sculpture.

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It was the starting point of Cubism, in so far as it prompted Braque to begin painting at the end of the year his own far more formal answer to Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

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Demoiselles changed the way Picasso and others viewed painting and led to great achievements in twentieth century art. Demoiselles offers no evidence of Picasso prodigious skill and created the opportunity and provoked the free interchange of ideas. In provoking Cubism Picasso became a leader and a revolutionist who would change the way Art was created and viewed.

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