Picasso's masks: Tracing the flow of cultural memory

Abstract

The article highlights three features of a cultural or sociocultural notion of remembering and forgetting: mnemonic artifacts, the sign-mediated or semiotic fabric of memories, and the inherently social and cultural nature of individual remembering. The gist of the paper is concerned with the third feature, outlining the interwovenness of individual and collective (or social or cultural) memories. To explain this argument, a case study is presented that draws on a key work of modern art, Picasso's painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon ( The young ladies of Avignon), unfolding its multi-layered history of individual and collective memories.