We all well know that Picasso’s Demoiselles D’Avignon is a modern painting, no doubt. However, what I find really intriguing is the reason for him to chose to paint in that style and the title he gave to this art piece.
First of all, as we have talked in class, modernist painters searched and explored different ways to flatten their paintings, to make their painting just a painting, not a representation. Following this idea, we can say that Picasso wanted simply to paint five naked women, not to judge them, not to portray a scene from a brothel. Nevertheless this paining is so provocative that it makes the public react strongly. Sexuality, nudeness and masks that he had captured might disgust some and inspire others. What ever it is Demoiselles D’Avignon makes people talk.
In his paining, Picasso used very narrow palette of colors: beige, blue, some green and white. We can easily deduct that the paining was suppose to focus on the objects or people presented not the natural look of it. Using beige as principal color highlights the nudity of the ladies in the painting. Blue and green break from this tone to underline the exotic aspect of the masks wore by the courtesans. Picasso left some spaces white, however they do not make the paining look unfinished. Personally, I think that the lights, pastel colors make Demoiselles look like a picture one could draw with a chalk on a sidewalk, the white in this case would be the asphalt that was intentionally not colored.
Another interesting aspect of this paining is its title- Demoiselles D’Avignon. Demoiselle in French language means a young girl, who is nothing as the women portrayed by Picasso; they are well developed, and above everything are prostitutes.
Did Picasso use this word to bring people’s attention to the fact that the girls who work in brothels are young, or did he use as a sweet way of calling them? Either way, demoiselle is not a common name for women who work in brothels.
Second part of the title, d’avignon, translated into English means from Avignon. I know that the explanation to the paining mentions that Avignon is a port in Spain, and that is how the painting refers back to the original idea of sailor, but it is also a city in south of France. Being more familiar with the French city, I looked at the paining through that perspective. Avignon, in south of France, is the city where the head of Catholic Church was located before it moved to Rome. Following this idea it would mean that Picasso named his paining “little girls from the city of pope” and the same paining represents naked women in a brothel. How ironic is that?
This leads us back to the idea of paining being a paining, not a representation. The painting is just the scene it portrays not en entire “story” connected to it.
 

(it's been a while since I wrote this blog post, I just forgot to post it)