Original subtitles

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon by Pablo Picasso.

Big, bold, intimidating and jagged as broken glass.

This is the painting that marks the beginning of 20th century art.

It's one of those large, apparently violent, aggressive statements

which leaves you always feeling something.

I don't think anyone could look at that picture

and feel that they hadn't, in some ways, been affected by it.

Picasso referred to the picture as my brothel.

These are five towering prostitutes staring out at us

from an eight-foot square canvas.

The image horrified those who first saw it.

Someone said that one day Picasso would be found hanging behind it.

It's almost like a picture that's already been slashed.

Picasso himself shut it away in his studio for years.

Even there, it was turned to the wall and seen by only a handful of people.

The picture is unbelievably ugly, hideous.

I mean, you just want to reach for every strong word.

There's nothing about it that is harmonious, beautiful, by any conventional standard.

It's a picture crammed with conflict and tension.

Every element wars against its neighbor.

Style against style, rounded against pointed, front against back.

I think it's one of the most important pictures of all time.

This painting has changed the course of art,

even redefined our idea of beauty.

The Demoiselles is like a jewel.

It's faceted and it's like a diamond,

which is kind of always shining and reflecting and beautiful.

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon was born out of the greatest artistic rivalry of the 20th century,

the clash of two creative giants battling for leadership of the avant-garde.

Paris, 1906.

An astute American collector, Leo Stein,

is eagerly buying the work of a new artist called Henri Matisse.

Matisse is a man obsessed, a rising star,

conscious of his role as leader of the Paris art scene.

Into this arena comes a young Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso.

It isn't long before his prodigious talent also catches the attention of Stein.

Realising that Matisse and Picasso are the two most important painters in Paris,

Stein ensures they know it too.

In March 1906, he introduces them to each other.

Unleashing their rivalry

and sowing the seeds for the most important painting of the new century.

For the younger Picasso,

clearly there must have been an ever-increasing sense

that Matisse was the person who stood in his way.

I think both thought of it in competitive terms,

but I have a sense that Picasso thought of it

more in competitive terms than Matisse did.

At that moment, one painting was the talk of Paris.

At the Salon des Indépendants,

people had viewed it with hilarity and utter incomprehension.

The joy of life showed naked figures languishing

in a landscape of pink trees and yellow grass.

This was Matisse's latest work.

Visitors to the Salon had little trouble finding it.

From the doorway, as they arrived at the Salon,

they heard shouts and were guided by them

to an uproar of jeers, angry babble and screaming laughter,

rising from the crowd that was milling in derision

around the painter's passionate view of joy.

Matisse's art was provoking.

He was provoking the 19th-century taste, 19th-century decorum.

He was provoking what people, you know, expected of a painter.

Matisse, one could argue, was the first radical of the 20th century

with his brilliant strident colours and complementaries

playing off against each other.

But one person didn't laugh, Picasso.

For him, this painting changed everything.

Suddenly, his own work seemed sentimental and tentative.

Matisse had set him a challenge

and he had to respond with his most surprising work yet.

Picasso retreated to his studio,

a scruffy Montmartre tenement building

known as the Bateau Lavoie,

and home to a gaggle of impoverished artists.

He was unbelievably squalid,

ramshackle building, rats, no electricity.

There was, I think, only one tap.

Picasso's dealer, Daniel Kahnweiler, later wrote...

No-one can ever imagine the poverty,

the deplorable misery of those studios in Rue Ravignan.

The wallpaper hung in tatters from the unplastered walls.

There was dust on the drawings

and rolled-up canvases on the caved-in couch.

Beside the stove was a kind of mountain of piled-up lava,

which was ashes.

It was unspeakable.

Amid the chaos,

Picasso threw himself into his work.

He began to sketch endlessly,

hundreds and hundreds of drawings.

Through long days and nights,

Picasso poured his ideas onto paper.

In the fall of 1906, I think he decided that he was going to do a great breakthrough painting.

Now was his time.

As Picasso submerged himself in work,

his relationship with his lover began to deteriorate.

Fernand Olivier was an artist's model who shared his cluttered and chaotic studio.

The relationship bogged down almost immediately in resentment and guilt and a lot of infidelity.

This, I think, in a way, worked for Picasso,

because then he could see Fernand really as a threat,

as a destroyer, as a threat to his work.

Possessive and jealous,

Picasso would not allow Fernand either to leave the studio

or to distract him from his work.

He rented a second studio for himself alone

in the basement of the Bateau L'Avoir

and withdrew there every night to paint,

sleeping most of the day.

He became a virtual recluse.

She was twiddling her thumbs upstairs,

furious with him.

She wanted her guy around to come up and make love to her.

And here he was,

making love to these

whores on this huge canvas

downstairs.

And I think that she,

she resented the demoiselle.

She resented the fact that she was sort of in it,

but out of it, in a way.

There's no question about it

that the women in the demoiselle

are, to a great extent, Fernand.

In the summer,

it was very, very hot in this basement.

He's completely stripped,

stark naked,

with these women,

painting way like crazy.

I don't know what he was using,

and sort of oil lamps.

He must have had a lot of,

because you have a feeling

that this was painted

in this kind of brilliant light,

but just on the canvas

and otherwise darkness.

It was like,

like a witch doctor in his hut

preparing some magic potion

or some magic charm.

By late summer 1907,

Picasso had produced

the most extraordinary picture.

The huge canvas depicts

five naked women

with sharp, angular bodies,

triangular breasts,

and thick, heavy limbs.

Three of the women

stare aggressively out at us,

and two have heads

that are startlingly different,

with scarification on the cheeks.

One even has an eye missing.

The figure crouching

in the bottom right

is horrifically contorted

with her head spun round,

as if wrenched off her shoulders

and stuck on backwards.

Even the still-life detail

is unappetising,

with grapes more like musket balls

than fruit.

Nobody had ever produced

anything like this before.

Emerging from his months

of seclusion,

Picasso now showed his painting

to his friends.

Everyone was horrified.

The painter André Durand

said that Picasso would be found

one day hanging behind the picture,

so desperate did it appear.

Georges Braque,

the artist with whom

Picasso would later collaborate,

remarked that it's a very

that it seemed like drinking petrol

in order to spit fire.

Even his patron,

Leo Stein,

burst out laughing.

As for Fernand,

her silence spoke volumes.

She never mentions it at all.

I suppose she would have just

found it incomprehensible.

And she probably just thought

it's, you know,

an aberration

and a bad joke.

But it was Matisse

who reacted most violently.

He saw Les Demoiselles

as an attempt to ridicule

the modern movement,

a mockery of all he'd been doing.

He vowed that he would get even

with Picasso

and make him beg for mercy.

I think he had to be angry

with himself

for never having quite taken

Picasso seriously enough

and then to find himself confronted

by something like this.

The feelings of anger

about works of art

is a big sign

that something drastic

is being done

in terms of the shift of taste

required by the work.

Matisse responded to the Demoiselle

with this work,

Bathers with a Turtle,

painted in 1908.

The rivalry between the two men

would continue

for the rest of their lives,

though their relationship

always remained courteous.

In 1907,

they agreed to exchange canvases

and Picasso chose

a very personal picture,

Matisse's portrait

of his own daughter,

Marguerite.

But back in his studio,

Picasso's growing gang

of supporters

took delight in using it

for target practice,

albeit with rubber-tipped darts.

When Picasso painted

Les Demoiselles,

I think he not only...

He short-circuited that rivalry.

And I think it's

a fundamental fact

that we need to understand.

It's not simply

that he trounced Matisse,

that he went further

than Matisse had gone.

Matisse, in the end,

is a painter.

His aspirations are to

to paint beautiful paintings.

Picasso is taking on

philosophy in this painting.

He's taking on science.

Picasso is rethinking

the nature of sexuality,

rethinking the nature

of physical space,

and rethinking

the relationship

between art and the world.

Picasso himself

made no comment

on the painting

at the time.

He was notoriously reluctant

to talk about his work

and once said

that the more

he was questioned about it,

the more he was tempted

to tell complete

and utter lies.

Our best hope

of unraveling

Picasso's intentions

is to look at

the huge number

of drawings

that he did

for Les Demoiselles.

It appears

that more preparatory works

were done for this picture

than for any other

in the entire history of art.

Numbering more than 700,

the sketches reveal

is still a dense mix

of ideas,

influences,

and preoccupations.

In fact,

all the work

in the notebooks,

with these 700 drawings,

totally contradicts

the idea

of the inspiration

of a genius.

On the contrary,

it's a very,

very detailed work

which covers

every figure,

every detail.

It's almost

an academic work

on the nude,

in a way,

which is absolutely crucial

for understanding

the true meaning

of the painting.

Picasso's brothel

was originally

more crowded,

the five naked women

joined by two men.

Here's the composition

with seven characters.

It's the first time

that we come across it

in the notebooks.

We know,

thanks to the curtain,

that we're in an interior.

And there's a character

in the centre

of the composition

and it's towards

him

that all the faces

and looks are turned.

At this stage,

Picasso seems intent

on telling a story.

In the centre

of the composition

is a male client

at the brothel,

clearly identifiable

in some sketches

as a sailor.

The other man,

once described

by Picasso

as a medical student,

is an observer

at the scene.

In some versions

he carries a skull,

which could mean

that Picasso intended

this as a morality tale,

a reminder

that the price

of sin is death.

Picasso's fear

of illness and death

was legendary,

though this hadn't

stopped him

frequenting brothels

in the past.

It's been suggested

that one driving force

behind the picture

was his dread

of sexual diseases,

syphilis in particular.

Syphilis was rife

at the turn

of the 20th century

and often fatal

in that pre-antibiotic era.

Government information

warning of its dangers

was regularly distributed

through posters

and newspapers.

Syphilis was a huge threat

to everybody

in that world,

particularly people

who went to

whorehouses and so on,

and Picasso

caught syphilis

in Barcelona

in, I think,

1902 or 1903.

He was terrified

of syphilis.

It's very similar,

actually,

to the situation

today with AIDS,

sex being associated

with fear,

desire,

potential death.

That is something

that I think

is part of the emotional

scenario of the

demoiselle

and the terrifying

stares

and confrontations

of the women.

They are perfect

incarnations

of the femme fatale.

Picasso's chosen subject

of prostitutes

in a brothel

was not a new one.

The harem depicted

by Ingres

in Turkish bath

was one of the most

erotic examples

of the genre.

Painted in the 1860s,

it had been on display

in Paris in 1905

and Picasso

was captivated by it.

The Turkish bath

includes women

of various skin

colours,

just like the demoiselle,

and this whole tradition

of a kind of mix

of the Western

and the exotic,

what is called

Orientalism,

is part of the

background

of the demoiselle.

The idea of the woman

seen from behind

may also be a quotation

from Ingres.

From the very first sketches,

Picasso included

a squatting figure

with her back to us,

although what she's doing

is a matter for speculation.

It only occurred to me

very recently

that in fact

what the medical student

is holding

is a dossier

and that the

most radical figure

in the painting,

the squatting figure

from the back,

she's clearly

awaiting medical inspection.

This would explain

the extraordinary pose.

Others have seen

the figure

as a tribute

to Cezanne

since she resembles

a recurring figure

in his Bathers series

with an added twist.

Obviously,

that spread-legged pose

is going to be erotic

and provocative

and yet to turn her around

is to inflame

our imaginations

without letting us

see anything.

That's what he was after.

The other painting

often quoted

as a possible source

is The Vision of St John

by El Greco.

Not only are the unusual dimensions

almost identical,

but it was owned

at the time

by another Spanish painter,

Zulo Aga,

who also lived

in Montmartre.

He lived around the corner

when Picasso

was in the habit

of going there

and it was the only

major painting

by a major artist

which was in a private

collection

around the corner

and what more likely

and then I suddenly

saw all these parallels

between the two compositions.

It's pretty much

the same size

as the Demozel.

The composition

is very, very close

above all the figurine

on the top left-hand corner

with his hand up.

You find a recycling

of previous imagery.

So you can see

these figures

as a series of quotations

from the history

of Western painting.

It seems the more

Picasso developed

his ideas,

the more he simplified

the composition.

First to go

was the medical student,

leaving the sailor

alone in the middle

of the group.

The positions

of the five prostitutes

had now become

more fixed.

Then, it seems,

Picasso cracked it.

In a single

preparatory watercolour,

he laid out

the final composition

with just five

female figures.

Free now of men,

the picture took on

a completely new character.

All traces of storytelling

had been removed.

At one moment,

Picasso obviously saw it

as an allegory

of the risk

of syphilis.

And it's a wonderful

cul-de-sac

because he took

the figures out.

And so it's not

about syphilis.

I mean,

he took these

two key figures out

because he obviously

felt this was

too allegorical,

too anecdotal,

too obvious.

And there is not

a trace of them

in the finished painting.

By changing the picture

from a large composition

with a story

in seven characters

into one where

the five figures

are compressed,

where there is

no immediate story,

Picasso has leapt

from the narrative

to the iconic

and entered

another world,

that of modern painting.

It's a fundamental error

in a picture of this kind

to assume

a narrative

of any kind.

The picture

is against narrative.

It's also

against interpretation.

This final

enigmatic composition

was transferred

to an enormous canvas.

Now life-size,

the inspiration

for the figures

emerges more clearly.

Picasso was always

reticent about his sources

and about one

in particular

he had every reason

to be tight-lipped.

But unfortunately

for him,

the details

were meticulously documented,

chiefly by

the Parisian police.

In March 1907,

a young man

called Géry Pierret

walked into the Louvre

and stole

two Iberian stone statues.

He simply stuffed them

inside his coat

and walked out again.

One of them

he gave to the poet

Guillaume Apollinaire,

whose secretary

he'd been.

The other

he sold to Picasso.

Picasso was captivated

by its power.

Iberian stone sculpture

dating from the 5th century

BC onwards

was Spain's contribution

to the ancient world

and for Picasso

it represented

his cultural roots.

The stolen head

displays an enormous

scrolled ear,

a sharp wedge-shaped nose

and a great bulging eye.

All of them

features echoed

in the central two figures

of the demoiselles.

These Iberian figures,

they're very simplified,

they're crude,

which is in their favour

because he needed

the crudeness.

The supreme example

of Picasso

making something

staggeringly,

you know,

barbaric,

or if you like,

very beautiful.

They have this

sort of savage beauty.

beauty.

It was four years

before the police

caught up with Picasso

and questioned him

about receiving

stolen goods.

Surprisingly,

he escaped charges,

but Apollinaire

was briefly jailed

for his part

in the affair.

Despite their savage beauty,

the Iberian heads

weren't shocking enough

for Picasso.

at some moment

after he'd started

the canvas that way

he decided

this isn't tough enough,

this isn't weird enough,

it's got to be stranger.

How am I going to compete

with Matisse

if it isn't weirder than this?

While working on the painting,

Picasso made a visit

to the ethnographical museum

at the Trocadero,

later known as

the Museum of Man.

Looking back,

he had this to say

about the experience.

When I went

to the Trocadero,

it was disgusting.

The flea market,

the smell.

I was all alone.

I wanted to get away,

but I didn't leave.

I stayed.

I stayed.

I understood

that it was very important.

Something was happening

to me, right?

The mask weren't like

any other pieces

of sculpture,

not at all.

They were magic things.

At this point in history,

tribal art

was not shown as art.

It was, you know,

just jumbled up

in musty cases

as sort of documents.

And I think

that's what made

the impact of it

doubly strong

for Picasso

because here he was

alone on a cool day

in this rather

shabby museum

with cases

just stuffed,

full of stuff,

not displayed as art.

And it changed his life,

just this single visit.

The mask

stands for the face

rather than resembles it.

A triangle

is a sign for a nose.

A slit

is a sign

for a mouth.

So there is a sense

that signs

don't have to look

like the things

that they reference,

but can stand for them,

can symbolize them

in a sense.

That was enormously

productive for Picasso.

It gave a means

to break away

from realist

and naturalist

forms of representation.

He wants to know

how it's made,

how the expression

is achieved,

how the unevenness

of the face

is achieved.

This is not someone

who stands in front

of an African mask

as if it's a model.

This is someone

who will dismantle it

and put it together again

and show it

in another way.

Picasso later

denied this source

completely.

He insisted,

in print,

that at the time

he was painting

Les Demoiselles,

he was unaware

of the art

of black Africa.

On another occasion,

he snapped,

African art,

never heard of it.

Picasso liked

being a man

of mystery.

He hated being

taken for granted.

He couldn't stand it

if somebody said,

I see what that is.

It's, you know,

you've been to the

Musée de l'Homme.

Immediately,

he would deny it.

And yet,

X-rays have proved

that Picasso

at some point

painted over

two of the heads

to give them

the African style

of the masks.

One can really see

that Picasso

worked extensively

on the heads,

especially the head,

two heads

on the right

of the painting.

In the standing figure

on the right,

one can see

that at one time

the head had a much

more Iberian

style and feel to it.

That is evidenced

by the presence

of an ear,

which is no longer

seen in the painting,

and also this eye,

which Picasso

has in fact painted

over completely black now,

but in fact,

there were many features

of an eye

there originally.

Then,

in the case

of the crouching figure

down below,

one can see

several things

in this instance.

First of all,

there was once

an eye

in the area

of the bridge

of the nose,

where the bridge

of the nose is now,

but also the very

white passage

in the X-ray

is evidence

that there's

an intermediate stage

on this head

that was in fact

a layer

of a cadmium yellow paint,

which is a heavy metal paint

and is thus absorbing

much of the X-rays.

In fact,

little bits

of that yellow

cadmium paint

can be seen

peeking through cracks

in that face now.

Perhaps the most striking feature

of the whole picture

is the staring eyes

of all five women.

For these,

Picasso may simply

have looked in the mirror.

Well, Picasso

was enormously proud

of his eyes,

and they were remarkable,

certainly the most remarkable

pair of eyes

I've ever seen

in my life,

and he used them

like a sexual organ.

I mean,

he could have

women with his eyes,

and this is all part

of his Andalusian heritage,

that in Andalusia,

the mirada fuerte,

the strong gaze,

is enormously important.

Even though none of them

have naturalistic eyes,

there is a sense

at which one is

accosted by the picture

and looked at

by the picture,

and I think this is

what makes so many viewers

so uncomfortable

in front of that picture.

Not one of the five women

has two of the same eyes.

Every pair of eyes

is different.

Sometimes the white

of the eye is bluish,

sometimes one eye

is significantly smaller

than the other.

There's a sense

when you look at the demoiselle

and you all of a sudden

realise that it's

looking at you

and it's staring you down.

The more you stare at it,

the more it stares at you.

I can't think of any other

painting that does this

in quite the same way,

but it just stares at you.

Very intimidating.

Picasso's attitude to women

was notoriously complex,

and his demoiselle

came as a jarring contrast

to the passive,

sensuous nudes

that had adorned galleries

for centuries.

His distorted,

sharp-edged forms

challenged all the

Western traditions

of painting the female nude.

It is a very,

very aggressive

representation

of female sexuality.

There's nothing

pleasing,

indulging,

calm,

beneficent

about the image

of femininity

that the picture

constructs.

He seems to be looking

at the history

of representations

of the female nude

and examining

and dismembering

and pulling it apart

and fragmenting

all the conventions

that have made

the female nude

what it was.

Why is he so

nervous

about their genitals?

Because they are

astonished,

elided to an

astonishing extent.

And the breasts

also deny

their

sphericality.

They are like

noses,

they're not like

breasts at all.

He's hewing the women

as if they're made

out of wood.

Now you may say,

oh that's because

he's imitating

African sculpture.

But on the other hand

it's also because

he's trying to find

a new way

of drawing everything,

not just women.

The effect of how

angular they are

is in fact to make

them kind of flat

on the canvas.

They are not

rounded bodies.

And this is crucial.

The space between

the figures also

defies all expectations.

Instead of receding

into the distance,

the gaps take on

a life of their own.

The space

buckles outward,

it rips outward,

is even more material,

more volumetric,

more physical,

more violent

than certain aspects

of the figures

which abut it.

And it's highlighted

with the searing,

almost screeching,

white,

phosphorescent white.

They're not in

perspective.

One thing is not

further away.

You don't experience

it as a stage,

for example,

with the women

at the front

and then the draperies

at the back.

Since the 15th century,

European painting

had been based

on perspective

and the idea

that the flat picture

canvas is a window

through which you look

at the world

in three dimensions.

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

was the first picture

to reject this.

In 1907,

not even Matisse

had dared to go so far.

Le Bonheur de Vivre

in the end

is traditional

in its organisation

of space.

Matisse does have

perspective.

The figures in the

background are smaller

than the ones

in the foreground.

It's a simple thing.

Imagine the

intellectual courage

and the intellectual

clarity and lucidity

that it took

after 400 years

of perspective painting.

Imagine, you know,

the daring of Picasso

in taking that on

and rejecting it,

not casually

or accidentally

or naively,

but in the most

sophisticated

and mature

and authoritative

way possible.

In 1912,

a bitter split

with Fernand

meant that Picasso

was looking for

a new home

for himself

and his canvases.

He was soon renting

a large, sunny studio

in Montparnasse

and in this photograph,

Les Demoiselles

can just be seen

lurking

in the top left corner.

In 1916,

nine years

after it was painted,

the picture

was publicly exhibited

for the first time.

It was at this point

that André Salmon,

the organiser

of the exhibition,

gave it the title

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon,

perhaps because

Avignon had a reputation

as a town

of ill repute.

It was very difficult

because Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

is not his title.

As you know,

it's a title

that was given

much later

by André Salmon,

and he never said

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

If you said to him

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon,

that was the end of it.

For him,

the title would always be

The Brothel.

The title's very ironic,

I think,

because,

but that's really got to do

with the connotations

of the French word

Demoiselle,

which we might think of

as, you know,

a polite term

for young ladies,

but is usually

in French

used fairly ironically.

So,

the Demoiselles d'Avignon,

the young women of Avignon,

is a coded reference

to the fact

that this is a picture

which represents

a group of women

who are understood

to be prostitutes.

Picasso was apparently

offered 20,000 francs

for the picture,

but wouldn't sell.

Instead,

it returned

to the seclusion

of his studio,

where it stayed

for eight more years,

seen only

by a handful of people.

And yet,

its influence

was slowly seeping

out into the corridors

of the wider art world.

Picasso,

at this stage,

he almost chose

to have a subterranean influence.

He knew

what he was doing

was so important.

He was almost

like a research scientist.

And this would continue

right through

the First World War.

If people wanted

to see what Picasso

was doing,

they visited his studio.

By the mid-1920s,

the Demoiselle d'Avignon

becomes

the great cult

work of art

in Paris.

It was

a talisman,

an icon,

a totem.

It was clearly

the most powerful,

the most troubling

image in modern art.

By 1924,

Picasso was successful

and married

to Olga

Horklova,

a Russian dancer.

In that year,

Picasso finally parted

with Les Demoiselles.

It was bought

by Jacques Doucet,

a well-known couturier

who paid 25,000 francs for it,

the equivalent

of 4,500 pounds today,

a risibly low price

for a painting

of this importance.

It's always been

a bit of a mystery

why Picasso sold

the Demoiselle.

He'd had it

rolled up

in his studio

for years

and years

and years

and it was

some years

after his marriage

to Olga

that he sold it.

Olga had never

seen it

and I think

he got it out

to show

a German critic

and it was

rolled out

on the floor

and Olga saw it

and was absolutely

horrified.

So get that thing

out of the house,

I don't like it.

The painting

was displayed

in Doucet's

luxurious studio home

where it hung

on an extravagant

stairway

made of glass

and enamel.

Picasso never went

to see the painting

in its new home

despite Doucet's plea

that there are

several of your children

who would like

to see you.

Doucet was a couturier.

He had taste

but it was

a big bourgeois

sort of taste

and I think

Picasso must have

resented

the idea

of this masterpiece

being treated

as if it was

a collector's item.

I think Picasso

always regretted

having sold it

and never sold

anything to Doucet again.

Doucet died

in 1929

and his widow

later sold

Les Demoiselles

to a dealer

for six times

the price

Picasso had received.

It would be

ten years

before the picture

would surface again

to take its place

in the history books.

In 1937

the painting

sailed for New York

and went on display

in a Manhattan gallery

but not for long.

By the end of the year

it had been bought

by New York's

Museum of Modern Art

who paid

$28,000 for it

still a bargain

at just over

£200,000

in today's money.

On May 8th

1939

Les Demoiselles

went on display

at the museum.

Ever since

the painting

has been the jewel

at the heart

of the museum's collection

where it's celebrated

as one of the

cornerstones

of modern art.

If it had remained

in a Parisian collection

perhaps even

if it had remained

in a Parisian museum

it would not have

had the effect

it did

in the second half

of the 20th century

and it wouldn't have

the reputation

it does today.

Every study

of modern art

started with

the Demoiselles.

It was a picture

that seemed

to be a kind

of earthquake.

The usual rhetoric

about it

was that it was

the first painting

of the 20th century

so it had

a book of Genesis

quality.

In 1940

Les Demoiselles

acquired one label

that would stick

when it was called

the first cubist picture.

Yet many people

feel that the breakthrough

it made

can't be so easily

categorized.

Now when people

think about cubism

they often think

about multiple

viewpoints

the idea that you

see things from here

and there

and therefore

there are different

perspectives in the

same painting

so it's very tempting

to read that back

into the Demoiselles

d'Avignon

and to say

okay you see this

figure from the side

and that one

from straight on

and really

are they all

really in the

same space.

My own guess

is that in this

sense

the Demoiselles

is not yet

really a cubist

painting

is a unified

point of view.

Cubism absolutely

follows on

from what he does

in 1907

in Les Demoiselles

it's like a sudden

flash of intuition

in which Picasso

sees this.

What's undisputed

is the effect

of the painting

on the new generation

of American artists

who are now able

to see it

for themselves.

It's really

the generation

of Jackson Pollock

and Willem de Kooning

and the artists

of the New York

School

who register

the impact

of the Demoiselles

d'Avignon.

They were ready

for it in a way.

They had been thinking

about Jungian analysis

and primitive cultures

and getting down

to basics

and the idea

that by simplifying

painting

you were simultaneously

probing the depths

of the human psyche.

These were issues

that didn't really

interest Picasso

in 1910

but they were

very relevant

to American artists

in the 1940s

and 50s

and that's I think

when the painting

became an icon

that really said

to people

yes

have the courage

to explore

your own unconscious

to explore

your own sexual feelings

your image of women

your image of the world

and this will all turn out

to be meaningful

and also turn out

to be a way

of reinventing painting.

Picasso has blazed

the way for you.

The ultimate connection

comes with

William de Kooning

who sort of

he who does a series

of paintings

of women

of kind of

monstrous

abstracted women

who are

very much

the New York

descendants

it's as if

Picasso's

demoiselle

had migrated

to New York.

For decades

people's attempts

to understand

the quintessential

20th century painting

were frustrated

by the artist's

reluctance

to comment on it

but when Picasso

died in 1973

he left thousands

of photographs

notebooks

and postcards

that became

a fresh source

for scholars

still looking

for clues

to his work.

At the Picasso

Museum in Paris

it's taken years

to sift through

this archive.

It was only

in 1997

that curator

Anne Baldassari

came across

a series of

postcards

of African life

published in 1906.

Picasso never set

foot in Africa

so all that he knew

about Africa

he knew from imagery

and popular imagery

even populist.

I'm going to show

you types of women

it's the only one

of the postcards

that shows a group.

If you look here

at this seated woman

and as far as this one

we have a central group

that's very close

to that of the demoiselle

with the woman

in the opening

the woman with her arms open

and the woman

with her legs apart

who's sitting

on this typically

African seat

and who's in a

perfectly ordinary

position

for an African woman

who's sitting

on the ground.

Picasso had this

same ability

to appropriate

and manipulate

sources

from high culture

and from popular

ethnographic sources

and I think that today

we're prepared

to accept that.

We've made a lot

of progress.

But in 1997

it was quite a shock

to have to accept

that a major canvas

like the demoiselle

d'Avignon

could have as its source

something banal

and mediocre

a photograph

reproduced

a thousand times over

ten thousand times over.

It was shocking.

It was shocking.

For the last year

Les Demoiselles

has been out

of the public eye

undergoing major

conservation

in readiness

for the reopening

of the Museum

of Modern Art

in Manhattan

in 2005.

The first step

was to clean

the surface

of the painting

using a widely

available liquid

saliva.

Actually saliva

works quite well

to take off

the little bit

of surface dirt

that's accumulated

over the last

twenty years.

It dissolves

dirt

and things

that you might

see on top

of the varnish

layer

quite easily

and controllably

with a minimum

amount of moisture.

The next stage

was the removal

of the varnish

applied to the painting

in the 1950s.

The varnish

really has the effect

of unifying

the surface

and giving it

almost a laminated

appearance.

For example

areas where

there's a very

thickly applied

paint next

to an area

that he just

passed the brush

over once

tends to not

have any

difference in

appearance.

Once the varnish

is removed

we can see

more easily

the beauty

of the paint

application

and the

difference

between these

areas

which he

obviously

intended.

Picasso never

came to New York

to see the

painting.

He once said

a picture lives

by its legend

not by anything

else.

much of the power

of Les Dermoiselles

comes from its

large scale

one reason perhaps

why this image

doesn't easily lend

itself to reproduction

on mugs,

mouse mats

and tea towels.

The most effective

tribute is to

replicate it

in its full glory.

The project

was to recreate

the painting

original dimensions

and in

original materials.

The surface

became like an arena

in which to kind

of negotiate

the great

weight or the

great forefather

Picasso.

The colors

always to me

seem very refreshing

and always like

after you look at it

you just feel a little

better after having

seen the colors.

It must be something

like an Aegean

seaside resort

where you just

beautiful

sumptuous colors

and so it felt

it always feels

good to see

the painting

whether in

reproduction

or in

the original state.

The colors are great.

The colors are sort

of soothing

in comparison

to the intention

behind the painting.

There's no reds,

blues, yellows

there's all these

sort of muddy

middle tones.

There's something

really nice about

the simple shapes

that I get

really attracted to

and I want to keep

looking at it

and I don't feel

as uncomfortable

as a realistic nude.

Now approaching

its centenary

the painting will

soon be an antique.

So are we any

closer to deciphering it?

I don't think

he's saying

pity these women,

respect these women,

abhor these women.

I think he's more

interested in form.

I don't think he's

talking about

prostitution.

I think it's

pretty aggressive

obviously because

it doesn't have

smooth kind of

textures,

it's more harsh edges.

Very raw,

very base,

very sort of

the essence

of human sex

and sexuality

and gender.

He's just sort of

flaying it open

I think

for the world

to see.

As soon as you decide

that the

Demoiselle d'Avignon

is a picture of

prostitutes welcoming

or threatening

or threatening

or something,

a suppliant male

or a client

or whatever,

then you can stop

looking at the picture.

Then you've got it

out of your hair

and that's exactly

what Picasso

didn't want you to do.

He wants you

to be stuck with this

as a profoundly

resonant image

that will not

deliver its secrets.

The Demoiselle d'Avignon

was an artistic detonator

set at the beginning

of the 20th century.

It was the first

great attack

on the familiar

and despite all

that followed,

its potency

has barely diminished.

When we think

about the sort

of the classic

moments of modern

culture,

Stravinsky's

Writer's Spring,

James Joyce's

novel Ulysses,

all these

definitive

artworks of the

20th century

in music

and literature,

they all came

considerably later

than this painting.

It will always be

modern,

it will always

be challenging,

it will always

be difficult,

it will always be

the greatest

masterpiece

of the 20th century.