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Picasso's Brothel: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Author(s) : Wayne Andersen

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Andersen seeks to rescue the painting from the myths that obscure its origins, which depict it variously as an outburst of rage against Picasso's live-in lover, or as an act of vengeance for having contracted syphilis from a prostitute; such myths are the source of the artist's reputation for misogyny. Looking back to the original sources of these stories, Andersen identifies a catalog of errors, passed from one author to another, which have distorted our view of Picasso.

By studying X-rays of the finished canvas, Andersen reconstructs a "lost" version of Les Demoiselles, a first completion prior to the artist's "epiphany" at a display of African masks that inspired him to rework the painting. By refuting the scholarly assumption that the grotesquely painted heads of three of the figures are integral to Picasso's first conception, he shows that the original composition provides no evidence of Picasso's alleged horror of women.

Supported by 200 illustrations, including 12 color plates, ranging from Picasso's drawings and paintings to contemporary pornography and photographs of prostitutes in brothels, Andersen's provocative arguments establish Picasso as a man who wrested sexuality from the aesthetics of art, and created a new and revolutionary way of seeing for the 20th century.

Written in clear, accessible prose, this book will spark another round of Picasso scholarship, and appeal to the general reader, the art historian, and the psychoanalyst alike.