Picasso.mania : Demoiselles from elsewhere

In Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Picasso juxtaposes the jagged shards of the prostitutes’ bodies with ridged, brightly coloured masks inspired by African art, which was growing in renown at the time. This admiring and violent appropriation, which was central to his later work, led to the painting’s iconic status and attracted the interest of the appropriationists (Mike Bidlo, Richard Pettibone and André Raffray). The sexual and exotic nature of Les Demoiselles has been underlined by Sigmar Polke, Richard Prince and Jeff Koons.

For African and African American artists, Picasso is an ambivalent figure. While he helped raise awareness of African art, he also made it part of Western art history, which only considered it from the perspective of Western artists. Women artists also highlighted the fact that his models and prostitutes were artistic objects rather than subjects.

Artists working in the post-colonial era and its relationships of dominance, such as Faith Ringgold, Robert Colescott, Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou, Wangechi Mutu and Romuald Hazoumé, have called attention to the “Africanness” of Les Demoiselles. Women artists have given these figures a more subjective viewpoint.