Comparative Analysis of “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” and “The Dance” Essay

The Les Demoiselles dAvignon (1907, Museum of Modern Art, unfermented York), is an oil on canvas create by Pablo Picasso. This is an image of 5 nudes grouped around a mum life. Of the five externalises, tetrad of the opines ar facing the viewer. There is a gulf in the fifth figure as she is crouched on the floor, her back aside from the viewer, charm her face, or mask, addresses the viewer. This vertically aligned moving picture measures 8x78 and was particolored after the Blue and Rose periods. The move (First Version, 1909, Museum of Modern Art, New York), is an oil on canvas delineation by Henri Matisse. This is an image of five nude women linking arms in an oval. This horizontally aligned painting measures 86x129. This painting lacks detail and complexity. The subterfugeist has used four colourise throughout the painting. These colors argon green, pink, black and blue.Picasso painted Les Demoiselles dAvignon after a notorious place of prostitution. The viewer is both attracted to the advances of the demoiselles, soon enough at the same time, recoiled with the horror of these prostitutes. This art belongs to a style of art known as Cubism. The savage, inhuman heads of the figures ar the direct result of Picassos recent exposure Iberian art from the sub-Saharan, Western African region. The violence on abstraction, flatness and angularity prevalent in the painting ar attributes of Iberian art. by this painting Picasso has lost the interest of naturalistic curves of the anatomy and has chosen to create planes. The figures search flat, two-dimensional and weightless. We can divide the painting into portions, i.e., the three-fifths on the left field and the two-fifths on the right.The left hand portion relates to the colors of the Rose period, while the shift in colors towards blue on the right is reminiscent of the Blue period. The primary difference between the left and the right sides however lies in the heads of the two figures. The f igures on the right are missing ears, their mouths are oval, their chins pointed and their nose oddly shaped. The ears, eyes, nose and mouth seem to be disjuncted and perhaps even dislocated for these two figures. Their shapes when compared to those of the left are grotesque. The excessive use of shadowing adds to the exaggeration of the African-like faces. Anotherexample of disjunction within the painting is the right leg of the women in the far left seems to morph in a block.In the Dance the viewer is no yearlong addressed by the gazes of the women. There is no audience-artwork participation. The women are no longer concerned with the audience. The dance seems to originate with the figure in the foreground, following a clockwise rotation. The painting offers soft linear contours that is pleasing to the viewers eyes. There is a disjunction which appears when the women in the foreground is unable to heave the hand of the figure to her left. This is where the tension arises.This br eak in unity shows that the passel is not complete. It shows the that the dance cannot continue eternally. The fact that one link in the chain is missing causes an unbalance. This unbalance is captured in the figure to the right of the figure in the foreground. It seems that since the figure in the foreground hastens her movement in determine to clasp her hand with the figure on the left. This sudden movement throws the figure on her right off balance. The five figures in the Dance are portrayed as caricatures rather than as real women.Les Demoiselles dAvignon is radically different in style to any of the paintings we have examined up bank now in class. The informality of the painting may suggest that it was mean to be a rudimentary experiment in form. It is almost as if the painting is layered with broken glass, and the viewer is expected to view this new, perverted image. In the painting, spatial depth and symmetry are destroyed. The space in which figures stand almost seems sculpted rather than painted. By observing the women on the far right, between the curtain, we notice how planar her body really is. Through the painting Picasso has distorted the ideal form of the female nude, which he has theorise into harsh, angular shapes.Within the painting are several sexual references. The pointed go on of the table in the foreground can be seen as a representation of penetration. From the posture of the second women from the left we can view her as either standing up or lying down. Though in the painting, the figure is painted standing vertically, the posture indicates that the position is more suitfor a horizontal position as though she was on a bed. This dual pose can be read perhaps as the rhythmical oscillation of a sexual act. The watermelon placed at the edge of the table can be considered a phallic symbol. The elan the watermelon slice extends beyond the table and towards the women can also be seen as another reference to penetration. Picasso has approached the theme of eroticism in a less conventional manner.In the Dance the viewer is no longer involved in the painting. One cannot read the painting on a higher level. Unlike Picassos Les Demoiselles dAvignon. There are no phallic symbolism. There is no eroticism expressed within this painting. It is the simplicity of the painting the audience appreciates. Matisse has gone back to the very fundamentals creating a painting of minimum detail and a very simple background. He has used blue in the background to represent the sky while using green to represent the grass. I am not suggesting that his painting was too simple to be considered a masterpiece. The simplicity is the beauty of it. some(prenominal) the paintings consist of five nude women, whose identities are unknown. Each mechanic has painted the basic forms of women, leaving out genitalia to illustrate that they were concerned with alone the forms of the figures. Both paintings offer an aura of high energy. The energy derived from the Dance is a result of the urgency the dancers have in forming the perfect circle and their inability to do so. In Les Demoiselles dAvignon the energy originates from the savage power these women possess. The forethought deriving from barbaric intensity of these two figures on the right clear out the alluring qualities the three figures on the left portray. In the Dance the artist has created the painting out of contours while in Les Demoiselles dAvignon, Picasso has firmly delimit planes with minimum of contours.Les Demoiselles dAvignon illustrates Picassos intense fear of women, his need to get the hang and distort them. Even today when we are confronted with this painting, it is hard to restrain a momentary fear. The Dance captures the beauty of women and dance through the traditional beauties of art. Picasso no longer considers the themes of traditional beauty of art nor the realistic portrayal of his subject. The Les Demoiselles dAvignon stands asa cruel re presentation to the delight of the senses that Matisses the Dance exalts.