March 25, 1907: Pablo Picasso Completes "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon"

March 25, 1907: Pablo Picasso completes his painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon -- The Young Ladies of Avignon. As documentary filmmaker Ken Burns put it, it "shattered the art world," and becomes the defining work of the art movement known as Cubism.

(Avignon is a city of about 93,000 people in the south of France, 427 miles southeast of Paris, and 64 miles northwest of Marseille.)

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso was born on October 25, 1881 -- the day before the gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona -- in Málaga, Andalusia, on the Mediterranean coast of southern Spain. He wanted to draw from the very beginning: According to his mother, his first words were "piz, piz", a shortening of lápiz, the Spanish word for "pencil."

He first visited Paris in 1900, and lived there on and off for the rest of his life. In 1901, a friend, the Catalan painter Carles Casagemas, committed suicide, and Picasso became deeply depressed over this. His paintings took on a somber tone, with poor subject matter: Prostitutes, beggars, drunks, blind people, old people. It became known as his Blue Period, and lasted until 1904. Probably the best-known painting from this period is The Old Guitarist, from 1903.

But in 1904, he met Fernande Olivier, a French painter and model, who awakened his sense of joy, and began his Rose Period. He began to paint happier figures, like clowns and dancers. The colors red, pink and orange became more common, as seen in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Supposedly, 1 of the 5 women in that painting is Fernande, although the faces are so twisted, it's hard to tell which one.

Fernande Olivier. Compare the pictures, and you tell me.

Les Demoiselles seemed to be the result of his rivalry with French painter Henri Matisse, whose Blue Nude had already caused a sensation. But while the woman in that painting seemed a more natural representation of the female body, Picasso's 5 Demoiselles were oddly posed and had, as I said, twisted faces, which would become a theme of his paintings for the rest of his long life.

No, images such as these were not realistic. Picasso once said, "Art is a lie that brings us closer to the truth."

In response, Matisse painted Bathers with a Turtle. You've never heard of it? Or of Blue Nude? That's not surprising, in spite of Matisse's fame. Neither of those is his best-known work. But even if you don't know the title Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, you've probably seen the image.

Pablo Picasso, 1908

Picasso would continue to go through phases, and muses/lovers, throughout his life, which lasted until April 8, 1973, at age 91, in Mougins, on the French Riviera. A museum dedicated to him is there -- just 4 miles northeast of the French film festival city of Cannes; 30 miles southwest of Monte Carlo, Monaco; 36 miles southwest of the French-Italian border -- and 16 miles southwest of Nice, where there is a museum dedicated to his rival, Matisse. An intrepid art fan of some means could visit both in one day.

Picasso had 2 sons, Paulo, a ballet dancer and his only legitimate child, and Claude, a graphic designer; and 2 daughters, Maya, a journalist, and Paloma, a fashion designer. He had 5 grandchildren, and his genetic line continues. Paulo died in 1975. As of March 25, 2022, the other 3 children are still alive. (UPDATE: Maya died on December 20, 2022; Claude on August 24, 2023. That left Paloma as the only survivor.) 

Picasso was played as a young man by Danny Webb in 2 episodes of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, in 1992 and 1993; as an old man by Anthony Hopkins in the 1996 film Surviving Picasso; as an old man by "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist on a 2013 episode of Epic Rap Battles of History; and all through his adult life by Antonio Banderas, a fellow Málaga native, in the 2018 season of Genius on the National Geographic Network.

Since 1937, the original version of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon has been on display at the Museum of Modern Art, at 11 W. 53rd Street in Midtown Manhattan. On March 23, 2022, I finally visited MoMA for the first time, and saw it -- although I didn't know it was there. I figured some of Picasso's work would be, and some of his well-known works are. But I was there to see Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh. (van Gogh died when Picasso was 8 years old, and they never met.)

In a 2013 episode of the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History, "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist played Picasso, against "Nice" Peter Shukoff, who played Bob Ross.

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March 25, 1907 was a Monday. Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. Pro basketball barely existed.

But hockey's Stanley Cup was won that day, by the Montreal Wanderers, the team known as "the Little Men of Iron." Champions of the Eastern Canada Amateur Hockey Association, they beat the Kenora Thistles, Champions of the Manitoba Hockey Association, in a 2-game, total-goals series, winning 7-2 on March 23, and losing 6-5 on March 25, with both games at the Winnipeg Auditorium. That gave the Wanderers a 12-8 win on aggregate, reclaiming the Cup from the Thistles, who had won it from them the preceding January 21.

Lester Patrick, later to coach and manage the New York Rangers, and become the namesake of one of the NHL's divisions and its award for the advancement of hockey in America, played for the Wanderers at this time. Art Ross, later to coach and manage the Boston Bruins, and become the namesake of the NHL's trophy for its annual leading scorer, played for the Thistles, but was later signed by the Wanderers. Both men were defensemen.

Although members of a Manitoba-based league, and playing their "home games" in this series in Winnipeg, the city of Kenora -- known until 1905 as Rat Portage -- is in western Ontario, about 30 miles east of the Manitoba Provincial line, 130 miles east of Winnipeg, and a whopping 1,157 miles from Toronto. (Canada is huge, and Ontario is a big part of it. Minneapolis is the closest major American city, 430 miles to the south.)

Kenora is home to 15,000 people, making it, by far, the smallest city ever to win one of North American sports' 4 major championships. (East Rutherford, New Jersey has about 10,000, but the Giants, Jets and Devils have never used the name "East Rutherford" -- and the Jets haven't won a title there, anyway.)