Picasso's 'Les demoiselles d'Avignon' (Masterpieces of Western Painting)

Picasso's 'Les demoiselles d'Avignon'Author(s): Christopher Green\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9780521583671, 978-0521583671\nSynopsis\nPicasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon has long been recognized as one of the most significant paintings of the twentieth century. This volume brings together essays from a variety of methodological and topical perspectives. Yves-Alain Bois finds in the painting the presence of trauma and opens the way to a psychoanalytical exploration. Tamar Garb asks what it could mean to women, focusing on Gertrude Stein as one of the painting's first spectators, while Patricia Leighten uses post-colonial theory to explore its conjunction of prostitution and African themes. Christopher Green asks what the confrontation of the European and the non-European could signify and whether this Picasso work can still be meaningfully linked to the grand narrative of modernist history. T.