Contained in:
Book Chapter

“We are all Demoiselles d’Avignon” or the Breaching of the Dominant Gaze

  • Maite Méndez Baiges

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.

  • Keywords:
  • Modernism,
  • Demoiselles d'Avignon,
  • Postcolonialism,
  • Feminism,
  • Global History of Art,
+ Show More

Maite Méndez Baiges

University of Malaga, Spain - ORCID: 0000-0002-0762-7004

  1. Amselle, Jean-Loup. 2003. “Primitivism and Postcolonialism in the Arts.” MLN, 118, no. 4, (French issue September): 974–88. 10.1353/mln.2003.0069
  2. Amselle, Jean-Loup. 2020. Rétrovolutions: Essai sur les primitivismes contemporains, Paris: Stock.
  3. Barr, Jr., Alfred H. 1939. Picasso: Forty Years of His Art. New York: The MoMA.
  4. Barr, Jr., Alfred H. 1946. Picasso. Fifty Years of his Art. New York: The MoMA.
  5. Bernadac, Marie Laure and Andoula Michael, ed. 1998. Picasso. Propos sur l’art. Paris: Gallimard.
  6. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1998. La domination masculine. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.
  7. Carmona, Eugenio. 2010. “Álbum 7: Cahier de dessins de Monsieur Picasso.” In Picasso y la escultura africana. Los orígenes de las Señoritas de Avignon, edited by Isidro Hernández Gutiérrez, 21–90. Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Artemisa.
  8. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2000a. “A Small History of Subaltern Studies.” In A Companion to Postcolonial Studies, edited by Henry Schwarz, and Sangeeta Rayen, 451–66.  Malden: Blackwell Publishers.
  9. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2000b. Provincializing Europe. Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  10. Chave, Anna C. 1994. “New Encounters with Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Gender, Race, and the Origins of Cubism.” Art Bulletin 76, no. 4 (December): 597–611.
  11. Daix, Pierre. 1970. “Il n’y a pas d’art nègre dans Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.” Gazzette des Beaux Arts, LXXVI (Octobre): 247–70.
  12. Daix, Pierre. 1991. Dictionnaire Picasso. Paris: Robert Laffont.
  13. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. 2004. A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translation by Brian Massumi. London and New York: Continuum.
  14. Duncan, Carol. 1989. “MoMa’s Hot Mamas.” Art Journal, 48, no. 2 (Summer: Images of Rule: Issues of Interpretation): 171–78. DOI: 10.1080/00043249.1989.10792606
  15. Einstein, Carl. 2002. La escultura negra y otros escritos. Edited by Lilian Meffre. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili.
  16. Fels, Florent. 1920. “Opinions sur l’art nègre.” Action, no. 3 (april): 23–6.
  17. Fels, Florent. 1923. “Chroniques artistiques: Propos d’artistes-Picasso.” Les Nouvelles littérarires 2, no. 42 (4 August).
  18. Flam, Jack, and Miriam Deutch, ed. 2003. Primitivism and Tweintieth Century Art: A Documentary History. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  19. Foster, Hal. 1993. “‘Primitive’ Scenes.” Critical Inquiry 20, no. 1 (Autumn): 69–102. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1343948
  20. Garb, Tamar. 2001. “To Kill the Nineteenth Century. Sex and Spectatorship with Gertrude Stein.” In Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, edited by Christopher Green, 55–76. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  21. Gikandi, Simon. 2003. “Picasso, Africa and the Schemata of Difference.” Modernism/Modernity 10, no. 3 (September): 455–80.  10.1353/mod.2003.0062
  22. Green, Christopher. 2001. Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  23. Kahnweiler, Daniel-Henry. 1963. Confessions esthétiques. Paris: Gallimard.
  24. Kalama, Henri. 2018. “Le paradigma ‘Art africain’: de l’origine à sa physionomie actuelle.” Artl@s Bulletin 7,  no. 1, Article 3.
  25. https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/artlas/vol7/iss1/3/
  26. Kleynhans, Theo. 2018. Picasso en Afrika, LitNet SeminaarKamer, https://oulitnet.co.za/seminaar/picasso_kleynhans.asp (2021-03-29).
  27. Leighten, Patricia. 2001. “Colonialism, l’art nègre, and Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.” In Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, edited by Christopher Green, 77–103. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  28. Lomas, David. 2001. “In Antoher Frame. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and Physical Anthropology”, In Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, edited by Christopher Green, 104–27. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  29. McGee, Julie. 2007. “Primitivism on Trial: the ‘Picasso and Africa’ Exhibition in South Africa.” RES. Anthropology an Aesthetics no. 52 (Autumn): 161–67. 10.1086/RESv52n1ms20167751
  30. Malraux, André. 1974. La Tête d’obsidienne. Paris: Gallimard.
  31. Martí, Octavi. 2006. “África descubre a Picasso, el africano.” El País, domingo, 26 March, 2006.
  32. Méndez Baiges, Maite. 2006. “Las colecciones de arte contemporáneo, revisadas.” Letras Libres no. 60 (septiembre).
  33. Picasso, Pablo et al. 1920. “Opinions sur l’art nègre.” Action, no 3, (avril).
  34. Rosenblum, Robert. 2001. Cubism and 20th Century Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams.
  35. Rubin, William. 1984. ‘Primitivism’ in 20th Century Art. Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern. New York: The MoMA.
  36. Salmon, André. 1912. “Histoire anecdotique du cubisme.” In La Jeune Peinture française. Paris: Société des Trente, Albert Messein.
  37. Senghor, Léopold Sédar. 2006 (1972). “Picasso en Nigritie.” In Picasso and Africa, edited by Laurence Madeline and Marilyn Martin, 145–48.  Cape Town: Bell-Roberts Publishing.
  38. Souchère, Dor de la. 1960. Picasso à Antibes. Paris: Fernand Hazan.
  39. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1988. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg , 271–313. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
PDF
  • Publication Year: 2022
  • Pages: 67-101
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
  • © 2022 Author(s)

XML
  • Publication Year: 2022
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
  • © 2022 Author(s)

Chapter Information

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

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

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

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

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

461

Fulltext
downloads

159

Views

Export Citation

1,339

Open Access Books

in the Catalogue

2,191

Book Chapters

3,763,352

Fulltext
downloads

4,396

Authors

from 923 Research Institutions

of 65 Nations

64

scientific boards

from 348 Research Institutions

of 43 Nations

1,246

Referees

from 379 Research Institutions

of 38 Nations