Les Demoiselles d’Avignon “d’après” Picasso: Transnational Rereadings

Abstract

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon by Picasso (1907) has been considered during its century of existence, the true paradigm of Modernim. As such, it has become a kind of testing ground for the different methodological approaches of Art History over the last hundred years. The critical fortune of this work has been constantly linked to the fate and appreciation of modern art itself from each of these perspectives: the formalist, the iconologic, semiotics, sociological, the contextualist, psychoanalytic, etc., until the most recent in time, that is, gender and postcolonial. Each has renewed the interpretation of one of the masterpieces of Picasso, while putting in question the more settled principles of Modernism. Within this set of new interpretations of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon are not only the speeches made by critics and art history, but also due to pictorial practice itself, the views of artists. And they are a contribution to the disruption of the hegemonic discourse on Modernism foundations. In this paper a handful of versions of Les Demoiselles Picasso made after Picasso, or d'après Picasso - according the French- are analyzed. It examines, in particular, pop versions by British artist Patrick Caulfield and the Spanish Equipo Crónica; by appropriationism of Mike Bidlo or Richard Prince up to the visions that offer a "subaltern" approach: the quilt of the French Collection (1991) series of african-american and feminist artist Faith Ringgold and parodies of spanish Rafael Agredano, who built a speech from the point of view of the "other". There are literal or free copies, versions, recreations, or simply works inspired by Picasso that destabilized the authority of the creator as ultimately responsible for the meaning of the work, multiplying the number of authors and therefore of speeches or possible meanings of the work that gave rise to Modernism. Pictorial cases reviewed are based on appropriationist, feminist and postcolonial budgets represent, together, a breakdown of the orthodox interpretation of Modernism.