Consider Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe and Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Describe the critical and public reception each of the works received upon first exhibit. Discuss the movements associated with each artist and indicate how earlier works of art influenced these works.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe was one of thousands of works rejected from the annual Salon in 1863. Manet wanted to prove that modern life could produce eternal subjects worthy of the great masters. He incorporated the iconography from Titian's Fete Champêtre and Raphael's Judgment of Paris. The public reacted negatively, perceiving that Manet was making fun of these master works. Manet, like the Realist Courbet, believed that modern life itself was the most suitable subject for modern art, and was associated with that movement.

Picasso's painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is considered a pivotal work in the development of 20th-century modern art. The entire composition is chopped up into planes, with no conventional modeling, flattening out the entire picture. The presentation of the female subjects with their angular, geometric shapes and primitive mask-like faces caused discomfort to many people, although the painting proved a significant beginning for his artistic journey in developing the movement known as Cubism. Much of this work was inspired by Iberian and African art.