Reading into Picassos Les Demoiselles dAvignon

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Reading into Picassos Les Demoiselles
dAvignon

• By Catia Beja

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(No Transcript)
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A Revolutionary Cubist Work

• Les Demoiselles dAvignon is regarded by many art
  historians and critics as a revolutionary work
  (Golding 156), the first cubist picture (Green
  1), and the painting that gave birth to the
  whole of modern art (Jones 1).
• CUBISM (1907-1914)
• One of the most influential art movements of the
  20th century.
• Begun by Pablo Picasso (Spanish) and Georges
  Braque (French).
• In Cubism, artists represent their subject from
  various angles at the same time. The subject is
  broken up, analyzed, and reassembled in an
  abstracted form using geometric shapes
  (http//www.artlex.com).
• The Cubism of Picasso and Braque was to be
  essentially conceptualtheir paintings are not so
  much records of the sensory appearance of their
  subjects, as expressions in pictorial terms of
  their idea or knowledge of them (Golding 162).

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My Thesis

• According to Lakoff Johnson, we understand
  experience metaphorically when we use a gestalt
  from one domain of experience to structure
  experience in another domain (230).
• Since cubist artwork uses geometric shapes to
  offer a conceptual image of its subject rather
  than a realistic representation of it, it offers
  us an essentially metaphorical aesthetic
  experience (Lakoff Johnson 235).

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My Thesis Continued

• In turn, we can understand other domains of
  experience in terms of such aesthetic
  experience, for like Lakoff and Turner say of
  poets, artists also use the same basic
  conceptual metaphors available to us all,
  although they may compose or elaborate or
  express them in new ways (Lakoff Turner 26).
• Thus, while Picasso uses a new cubist style of
  artistic representation to create image mappings
  in Les Demoiselles dAvignon, his painting can
  ultimately be understood as an expression of
  anxiety over the physical and moral consequences
  of sexual sin, via the conventional metaphors his
  image mappings evoke.

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Picassos Image Mappings

• SOURCE DOMAIN TARGET DOMAIN
• Sharp Geometrical Shapes Female Body Parts
• African Masks Female Faces

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Picassos Image Mappings

• Our experience of sharp geometrical shapes
  (knives, sharp edged rocks or furniture) is that
  they can harm us physically. As a result, they
  are perceived as dangerous and threatening.
• Picasso is said to have drawn inspiration from
  African masks (French Congo/Ivory Coast), which
  have traditionally been perceived in the West as
  primitive (Golding 158) or uncivilized art
  forms.

(http//www.eyeconart.net/history/cubism.htm)
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The Conventional Metaphors They Evoke

• Viewing nude women in seductive positions in
  terms of sharp geometrical shapes and African
  masks allows us to view female sexuality as
  dangerous, threatening, primitive and
  uncivilized.
• Picassos image mappings are, therefore,
  instances of the conventional way we conceive of
  female and non-white sexuality given Western
  cultures extensions of
• The Great Chain Metaphor
• (Lakoff Turner 208)

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The Extended Great Chain Metaphor

• The Great Chain of Being is a cultural model
  that concerns kinds of beings and their
  properties and places them on a vertical scale
  with higher beings and properties above lower
  beings and properties (Lakoff Turner 166).
• In the West each level of the chain was expanded
  to reflect the structure of the chain as a whole
  (Lakoff and Turner 209).

• God
• Humans
• Animals
• Plants
• Inanimate objects

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The Extended Great Chain Metaphor

• Women and people from the third world are
  placed lower than men and people from the first
  world in Western cultures model of The Great
  Chain.
• Thus, In Western Culture
• men and white people are ordinarily characterized
  by higher properties aesthetic and moral
  sense, and rational capacity
• women and racialized people are ordinarily
  characterized by lower properties physical
  characteristics, animal desires, and raw
  emotions
• (Lakoff Turner 166-167)

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The Extended Great Chain Metaphor

• We find this in
• THE BIBLE
• God created man in his image (Genesis 127)
  God created woman from mans rib to be a fitting
  helper for man (Genesis 218-23)
• Woman as the first to sin and tempt man to sin
  (Genesis 3)
• wives, submit yourselves to your husbands as to
  the Lord. For a husband has authority over his
  wife just as Christ has authority over the
  church and Christ is himself the savior of the
  church, his body Men ought to love their wives
  just as they love their own bodies
• (Ephesians 5 22-28)
• WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
• Feminist philosopher Genevieve Lloyd finds that
  in the work of Aristotle, Augustine, Descartes,
  Rousseau and Spinoza, reasonthe godlike, the
  spark of the divine in manis assigned to the
  male. The emotions, the imagination, the sensuous
  are assigned to women (Lloyd 117).

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• WESTERN LITERATURE
• In Shakespeares Othello, the black Othello is
  described in terms of uncivilized/animal desires
  
• an old black ram / Is tupping your white ewe
  (1.1.89-90)
• youll have your daughter covered with a Barbary
  horse (1.1.111-112)
• lascivious moor (1.1.122), erring barbarian
  (1.3.350)
• In Daniel Defoes Robinson Crusoe, Friday is
  described as irrational and savage (156)
• EVERYDAY STEREOTYPES
• Stereotype of the hyper sexual black male (once
  you go black you never go back) and black female
  (women often blamed for master-slave relations
  during slavery)
• Large array of derogatory terms used to label
  loose women
• Women objectified in advertisements to tempt men
  to buy products

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Other Conventional Metaphors at work in Les
Demoiselles dAvignon

• EYES ARE CONTAINERS FOR THE EMOTIONS
  (Lakoff Johnson 50)
• Womens eyes stare out at the viewer to indicate
  passion/desire ( a lower property on The Great
  Chain).
• DEPRAVITY IS DOWN (Lakoff and Johnson 16)
• Woman squatting further emphasizes the
  threatening immorality of female/non-white
  sexuality.

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CONCLUSION

• In the end, the common interpretation of this
  painting as an expression of anxiety over the
  consequences of sexual sin is possible because,
  even though Picasso uses a revolutionary style
  of artistic representation, he uses the
  mechanisms of everyday thought (Lakoff Turner
  67), such as The Great Chain Metaphor, Eyes
  are the Containers of the Emotions and
  Depravity is Down.

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THE END

• THANK YOU!

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Works Cited and Consulted

• Berlin, Adele Marc Zvi Brettler Eds. The Jewish
  Study Bible. New York Oxford University Press,
  2004.
• Daniel, Defoe. The Life and Adventures of
  Robinson Crusoe. Literature on line. ltwww.biblioma
  nia.com/Fiction/defoe/robin/index.htmlgt
• Golding, John. The Demoiselles dAvignon. The
  Burlington Magazine. Vol. 13, No. 26, 1992.
  115-120. JSTOR 2 Jan. 2008. lthttp//www.library.yo
  rku.cagt
• Green, Christopher. Review Les demoiselles
  dAvignon. Paris, Musee Picasso. The Burlington
  Magazine. Vol. 130, No. 1022, 1998. 391-392.
  JSTOR 2 Jan. 2008. lthttp//www.library.yorku.cagt
• Johnson, Mark George Lakoff. Metaphors we live
  by. Chicago The University of Chicago Press,
  1980.
• Jones, Jonathon. The Rift, the Break that
  divides past and future Les Demoiselles
  dAvignon. lthttp//arts.guardian.co.uk/criticgt
• Lakoff, George Mark Turner. More Than Cool
  Reason. Chicago The University of Chicago
  Press, 1989.
• Lloyd, Genevieve. The Man of Reason. Women,
  Knowledge and Reality Explorations in Feminist
  Philosophy. Eds. Ann Garry Marilyn Pearsall.
  Unwin Hyman, 1989. 111-128

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Works Cited and Consulted Continued

• Picasso, Pablo. Les Demoiselles dAvignon. 1907.
  Oil on canvas, 8' x 7' 8" (243.9 x 233.7 cm). On
  Display at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
  lthttp///www. moma.org/collection/conservation/dem
  oiselles.htmlgt
• Shakespeare, William. Othello. New York Oxford
  University Press, 1989.
• The Good News Bible. Toronto Canadian Bible
  Society, 1976.
• lthttp//www.artlex.com/Artles/c/cubism.htmlgt
• lthttp//geocities.com/picassogt
• lthttp//images.google.cagt
• lthttp//www.eyeconart.net/history/cubism.htmgt