Pablo Picasso. Les Demoiselles d' Avignon. 1907
oil on canvas 8'x7' MOMA
I’m reading this wonderful book called “The Cheese Monkeys, A novel in Two Semesters” by Chip Kidd and I thought that it might be apropos to what my blog is about. Set in 1957, the novel centers on a young man’s journey to “State” the local state college. He is studying art because, “Majoring in Art at the state university appealed to me because I have always hated Art, and I had a hunch if any school would treat the subject with the proper disdain, it would be one that was run by the government.”
At state he meets other art students and more or less falls into an
elfin almost Goth art student named Hims. She is a year ahead of
him and after sitting in on one of her advanced art history classes and
studying Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d' Avignon,” which she thinks is misogynistic
crap, she explains why:
“I’ve developed a rather brilliant standard-the Grandma Litmus. It’s the perfect way to evaluate any work of art-painting, sculpture, what have you.”. . . “Now for the Granny Litmus to work you have to forget anything you know about officially accepted art theory- all the critical stuff, doctines, movements, museums and all that, all right?” I nodded. “So: your Grandmother rings you and says she’s taken up . . . painting. Let’s say, and wants you to go up to the attic of her house and there’s a draped canvas. She unveils it and underneath is whatever thing you want to evaluate. You have to look at it that way, so you can decide.”I didn’t get it and said so.
“In other words, Grandma Litmus forces you to remove everything from the context of what these lamebrains call Art History and judge it for what it is, not what they say it is. You see? Take the Picasso from today—I mean, if Granny painted that you’d have her carted off to the happy house?
