Les Demoiselles D'Avignon and Cubism Movement
The intellectual elements of cubism are evident in Demoiselles. In Demoiselles, it shows a figurative composition of five nudes grouped around a still life in the foreground. The three on the left are more on the direction of classical figures, while the other two have all the barbaric qualities of primitive art. “The jutting angles of the torsos and limbs were in violent, and this gives the painting energy that animates the figures because of the unpredictable patterns. The figures and the background seem to form a relief that for goes all pursuit of depth and retains the close relationship to the pictorial surface” (Picasso’s Les Demoiselles D’Avignon, Masterpieces of Western Painting). However, these are not flat, but Picasso had shaded in a way that gives them certain three dimensions. Each individual figure is united by a general geometrical principle which superimposes its own laws on to the natural proportions, and they merge completely with the background. With the influence of the ancient Iberian sculpture where the evident in the heads in the central figures, and where the figures in the corner with large contoured planes herald an entirely new approach. Also, the faces of the figures possess a compelling force that owes much to African sculpture. So, Picasso simplified the painting, because he wants to reach the internal structures of the objects and trying to show that a picture is not a window on the world, but something which grasps the substance of an object and then restores it.