From Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon we learn that Picasso actually has somewhat of a fear of women, and even his own sexuality, because he is afraid of catching syphilis. In a way he is portraying the very personal power women hold over his own mortal fragility. This instability causes him to portray them in a very harsh, and primal way, with extreme sexual power over the viewer. They become very stark and hard to look at forms, as opposed to visually stunning nudes. Willem De Kooning on the other hand is taking the overly sexualized, and commercialized, imagery of the pinup girl that was proliferating at the time and is turning that on its head. He makes the female form overwhelmingly large and aggressive instead of meek, sexual, and merely attrative. From this we can see that in De Kooning’s mind, women are extremely powerful beings who are not to be trifled with. Once again, this leads to a piece that can be somewhat hard to look at due to its gruffness. Woman 1 most definitely stands on her own, and I don’t think the same could be said for any of her pinup counterparts of the
From Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon we learn that Picasso actually has somewhat of a fear of women, and even his own sexuality, because he is afraid of catching syphilis. In a way he is portraying the very personal power women hold over his own mortal fragility. This instability causes him to portray them in a very harsh, and primal way, with extreme sexual power over the viewer. They become very stark and hard to look at forms, as opposed to visually stunning nudes. Willem De Kooning on the other hand is taking the overly sexualized, and commercialized, imagery of the pinup girl that was proliferating at the time and is turning that on its head. He makes the female form overwhelmingly large and aggressive instead of meek, sexual, and merely attrative. From this we can see that in De Kooning’s mind, women are extremely powerful beings who are not to be trifled with. Once again, this leads to a piece that can be somewhat hard to look at due to its gruffness. Woman 1 most definitely stands on her own, and I don’t think the same could be said for any of her pinup counterparts of the