In his thesis on Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Steinberg postulated the fundamental role of the spectator (object of the appealing gazes of the five young nudes in the painting) as the catalyst of the meanings in the painting. From then on new critical perspectives would speculate about this subject, targeted by the personages in the painting, who bears so much responsibility in articulating the interpretation of the scene. Doubts were raised about the universal character of the gaze, the universal character of the receptor of the work of art and of Modern Art. From the end of the 20th century and activated by the most recent methodological approaches such as feminism and post-colonialism, new critical voices provoked the breaching of the dominating gaze. This chapter broaches the interpretations of this paradigmatic work of Modern Art made by feminist and post-colonial and subaltern theories, questioning the very proposals of Modernism. Feminism shows how gender conditioning affects the reception of a work of art. And allied with this, post-colonialism and subaltern theory begin to seriously question the way historiography has considered, or not, the relevance of Art négre in the avant-guard eclosion.
University of Malaga, Spain - ORCID: 0000-0002-0762-7004
Chapter Title
“We are all Demoiselles d’Avignon” or the Breaching of the Dominant Gaze
Authors
Maite Méndez Baiges
Language
English
DOI
10.36253/978-88-5518-656-8.07
Peer Reviewed
Publication Year
2022
Copyright Information
© 2022 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Book Title
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and Modernism
Authors
Maite Méndez Baiges
Peer Reviewed
Number of Pages
148
Publication Year
2022
Copyright Information
© 2022 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Publisher Name
Firenze University Press
DOI
10.36253/978-88-5518-656-8
ISBN Print
978-88-5518-655-1
eISBN (pdf)
978-88-5518-656-8
eISBN (epub)
978-88-5518-657-5
Series Title
Studi e saggi
Series ISSN
2704-6478
Series E-ISSN
2704-5919