New Encounters with Les Demoiselles d'Avignon: Gender, Race, and the Origins of Cubism

Abstract

Looking in depth and from new angles at Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, this essay brings gender and race to bear as categories of analysis on the foremost icon of modernist art history. The focus is on the reception of the work and the central but changing role it has long assumed in art-historical discourse. An attempt is also made to outline new roles the picture may yet serve for some viewing constituencies. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon functions here, too, as the entry point for an argument as to how Cubism, more broadly, might be interpreted in gendered terms.