At the beginning of the twentieth century, there were several waves of development in modern art. Some of the most representative paintings include Henri Matisse’s Joy of Life (1905-06) and Pablo Picasso’s response, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), which were the major works in the evolution of Fauvism and Cubism respectively. Both artists were further negating Western Classicism, extending from the previous movements like Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Primitivism, and creating new meanings for art itself.
First, both paintings were non-mimetic, non-illusionistic. They have signified the downfall of mimesis, the idea of art as a copy of the world. In Joy of Life, Matisse have used a palette of highly intense colors that in no way resemble the natural world. He seemed to be simply enjoying a kind of free play of colors, with those highly contrasting pink, purple, orange, and green. In Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, the colors are not as saturated, but instead having an overall earth tone more similar to sculptures, which have in many ways inspired Picasso’s art creation, such as the Iberian and African elements found on the faces of these figures. Nevertheless, the colors in both works are applied in an extremely flat manner, without much shading and chiaroscuro technique, clearly demarcating from the traditional illusionism.
Turning to the lines and brushstrokes, Matisse’s lines are curved and can convey a strong feeling of fluidity and dynamics. Combining with the free, disorganized, even destructive brushstrokes, Matisse seemed to have invented a new language of the body, of the figure. If we look at some sets of figures in the painting, such as the two figures in the bottom-right corner or the two figures in blue on the left, we can see strange combinations of bodily poses and forms. They seem to fuse with each other, without clear boundaries, and could be viewed as a kind of disruption of the perfection of form, negating Classicism. Instead, Picasso has mainly incorporated straight and sharp lines when portraying the deformed bodies of the women, the prostitutes, forming the Cubism style. From the curtain to the bodies, objects that should be soft and fluid are all presented in a rigid, sculpture-like way. And if we look at the bodies, we can also see strange proportions and positions. For instance, the second figure from the left does not seem to be able to support herself. It is more like a bird’s-eye view of a figure appearing recumbent (Steinberg 27), which adds on to the ambivalence involved this painting.
With the Cubism style and the square canvas, Picasso has created an image that is in some way extremely fragmented, with each figure isolated from each other. However, as Leo Steinberg has suggested, it actually does not mean a lack of unity in this work. As the figures directly stare outside of the painting, towards the viewer, the responsibility for the unity have been thrown to the viewer’s subjective response, and no other paintings have engaged the audience with such “brutal immediacy” (Steinberg 12). Unlike Matisse’s painting, which has become a world by itself, potentially portraying a prehistoric world as the origin of beauty and pleasure, Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon forms unity with the outside world, with the engagement of the viewer. There seems to be a kind of phenomenological experience associated with this painting, which might contain some erotic, sexual metaphor. And all of these have been responses to Matisse’s Joy of Life and Fauvism in general.
In summary, both paintings have been important works in the further development of modern art. While still negating the Classicism tradition, inheriting from previous movements like Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Primitivism, both Matisse and Picasso have extended from these practices and incorporated new elements and meaning into art, greatly influencing the development of later artworks.