JJoy of Life and Les Demoiselles D' Avignon

When comparing “Joy of Life” (1905-06) by the great Fauve master Matisse with “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” (1907) by Cubist monarch Picasso, we can find some interesting parallels and disparities, although these two paintings show different stylistic qualities.

In speaking of historical contributions, both paintings stand at a turning point. As universally recognized, “Demoiselles” heralds the beginning of Cubism, the most influential artistic movement in the 20 th century. In this painting, Picasso combines many artistic sources and elements, such as African sculpture, Greek vase painting, and Egyptian and Spanish primitive art to start a new direction of art. As he declared, “It was my first exorcism painting.” The sudden oscillations between moods that verge on sentimentality and those of great violence are typical of Picasso’s career.

In the same way, “Joy of Life” is considered as crucial turning point in a struggle, which continued nearly all of Matisse’s life. The struggle, as he wrote long after, conflicted with the viewpoint “current at the time I first began to paint, when it was permissible only to render observations made from nature.” Matisse’s figures abandon themselves to nature physically as the impressionist painter had visually. Not only Matisse’s color, but also subjects were called “the wild beasts” by a critic.

By analyzing their style and content, both paintings individually show strong pictorial achievement. They also have some inevitable cultural and historical connections as well as artistic similarity to each other.

Both paintings distort and abstract groups of figures, and both use of line and shape independent of the subject, but with different moods. “Joy of Life” sets a stage for a happy company of male and female nudes. The cheerful, Golden Age-like mood is produced by the curvilinear rhythmical composition and extremely arbitrary use of color, which symbolizes and expresses the joy of primitive life. The naked group of figures simply revels in their own beauty and in that of the world. In spite of the fact that “Joy of Life” greatly influenced and challenged young Picasso, especially his preparatory drawing series for “Memoiselles”, Picasso’s paintings keeps its own artistic style and invention. Here, the compression of space, angular proportioning of naked women and their African mask-like distorted faces express a kind of aggressive female sexuality that differs from the sweetness and fantastic “Joy of Life”.

Also, even though these two paintings depart from their conventional roots, traditional, especially Renaissance and classical influences still apply to them. In “Joy of Life”, Matisse continued to represent the Arcadian theme. Despite the distortion and simplification of figures and landscapes, the postures and composition remind me of Poussin, 16 th century Venetian painters, and Cezanne. The same thing happens with “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon”. The African sculpture-like distortion of figures, the creative four dimensional angular forms, and the harsh white highlights do not prevent people, at least me, from recalling its traditional heritage, especially Jean Ingres’s “Turkish Bath” and Cézanne’s “Bather Series”. So, the important point of view, in my personal opinion, is that both paintings play a transitional role, like a bridge, carrying ideas and concepts from the traditional side to totally abstract 20 th century painting developments.

Yu Gan 1989 Fall

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<1> Arnason, H. H. ­ History of Modern Art: painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, page 146

<2> Hart, Frederick. Art: a history of painting, sculpture, architecture, page 895