Visuality, body and sexuality: a study about the representation of the female body in the work of Pablo Picasso

Abstract

This project aims to analyze the representation of the female body in the work of Pablo Picasso, prioritizing three significant moments of his oeuvre. It will firstly address Picasso's formative years, between 1898 and 1906. His production during that period culminated in the renowned 1907 painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, a piece of work that will receive detailed analysis throughout the course of the research. Furthermore, this study seeks to examine Picasso's production between the late 1920s and early 1930s, in which the oscillation between the grotesque and the angelical, captured in the representation of the female figure, becomes prominent. These bodies of work will be taken as a point of departure to analyze the processes of deformation, disaggregation and formal condensation, dismemberment and obliteration that broadly occur in Picasso's work when it portrays the female figure. The paper employs the expression "representation of the female body" in a reasonably open-ended capacity, given that the focus here has to do, not only with the female body itself, but also with the psychological, social and cultural roles that it implies. By accepting the assumption that Picasso's work is a paradigmatic place where important issues concerning the perception of the body in modern art - and the female body in particular - are condensed, the project intends to discuss matters that, despite recent efforts to renovate the field of Art History, remain controversial to this day. It aims, thus, to collaborate to the discussion of the female body in modern art, while also contributing to the criticism of the artist's work. (AU)