'The Young Ladies of Avignon' and the 'fake news' of Campdevànol
Alain Moreau, a French collector, has published in the bulletin of the Royal Catalan Academy of Fine Arts of Sant Jordi the text titled Picasso and Primitive Art. Picasso's 'Blacks' Leave French Catalonia, whose thesis has been widely reported by various Spanish and international media. Moreau maintains that the medieval frescoes of Campdevànol, Sant Martí de Fenollet, and the Devoted Christ of Perpignan influenced Picasso's painting. The Young Ladies of Avignon (The demoisellesfrom Avignon, 1907), and dismisses the influence of black art. These statements are fake news due to the lack of historical and documentary rigor. By spreading his "vision," Moreau contaminated public opinion, which, without sufficient evidence, formed a mistaken idea about one of the most important paintings of the 20th century and generated false Picasso-like expectations among the inhabitants of Campdevànol.
The background of this text is The enigma of Campdevànol, a photomontage from 1995. There, "manipulating photographs of photographs of copies of reproductions –and so ad infinitum– from a note" (Àngela Molina, ABC, Catalonia, 1995), Moreau, who defines himself as an "art terrorist", baptized the montage as the Campdevànol Pre-ManifestoPicasso finished painting The demoiselles in the summer of 1907 and the pre-Romanesque paintings of Campdevànol were not discovered by Ramon d'Abadal until two years later, in August 1909. To circumvent such a well-documented fact, Moreau resorts to a pirouette and diverts Picasso's trip to Gó to Campdevànol - the artist as the discoverer of the frescoes!
The bibliography presented by Moreau is outdated. Possibly for this reason he insists on the opposition between black art and Romanesque, which was overcome decades ago. Leo Steinberg (The philosophical brothel, 1972) disavowed Barr's view on The demoiselles as a masterpiece of the Black Period. I already demonstrated in my doctoral thesis, directed by Dr. Lourdes Cirlot (Picasso's iconography 1905-1907. Influence of Pompeian painting, 2009), awarded the Blecua Prize (University of Barcelona, 2012), the influence of Pompeian painting during these years and how it was combined with Catalan Romanesque art from Picasso's stay in Gósol until The Demoiselles of AvignonThe only documented Romanesque influences in Picasso's celebrated work come from two sculptural models located in Barcelona: the Eve in the cloister of Sant Pau del Camp and the Virgin of Gósol (currently in the MNAC).
The trip to Gósol
At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, Catalonia began to recover its past and Romanesque and Gothic styles began to be considered the national art. Picasso painted Romanesque and Gothic motifs from Barcelona, walked with Vidal Ventosa through the old quarter, contemplated Romanesque and Gothic pieces restored by the Junyer Vidal brothers and, seeing altar frontals, capitals, carvings, sculptural groups, etc., in the exhibition Ancient art (1902), fixed the basic outline of the Romanesque style in memory. Without documentation, no Picasso image can be linked to a Romanesque one, as the artist had internalized the features of this style. In Gósol, the atmosphere, the carving of the Virgin, and the celebrations encouraged the externalization of Romanesque models in his painting.
Picasso and Fernande Olivier arrived in Barcelona on May 20, 1906, and were in Gósol by the 27th. The couple stayed in Barcelona for a week. They took the 6 a.m. train from Barcelona, with a 12-minute stop in Manresa, and continued on the Manresa Economic Railway to Berga, arriving in Guardiola de Berguedà at approximately 11:46 a.m. From there to Gósol they made "a long journey of several hours on the back of a mule," according to Fernande. The mules travel at 10 km/h; if they didn't stop, they would travel the 36.8 km distance in 4 hours. However, with rest periods of 1 hour and 15 minutes every 9 km, they arrived at night.
Dr. Fontbona supports Moreau's hypothesis by fictitiously placing Picasso in Ripoll, near where the Campdevànol frescoes were. He bases his argument on an error concerning the "Catalan railways," ignoring the fact that, since 1904, the route to Guardiola was covered by the Manresa company. Thus, he maintains that Picasso traveled on the Barcelona-Ripoll line, even though the Ripoll-Gósol section (73.8 km) could not be covered in one day by mule.
The Campdevànol frescoes: buried and covered up until 1909
The illustrious Vic native Ramon d'Abadal (1888-1970) – a law and history student, keen on archaeology, cultural excursions and drawing – cleared rubble in August 1907 from plans for the church of La Vella de Campdevànol, located on a property. Having finished the work, on August 18 he wrote to L. Nicolau that, upon leaving, he had noticed small fragments of paint between two adjoining walls, as detailed by Francesc Vilanova in Ramón de Abadal between history and politics (1996).
In 1909, De Abadal demolished part of the 12th century wall to check if there were indeed paintings, and on August 28 he published the discovery in the Montanyesa Gazette from Vic: "The painting, boxed in between the two walls, and despite the fact that the water that filtered through erased most of it, by separating the stones, he managed to obtain a sketch that allows us to understand the effect, which is impossible with just a direct view of the original...".
The watercolor sketch was distributed in black and white, the original was lost and Pijoan made a color copy in 1948. Since 1909, the news of the Montanyesa Gazette, but Moreau continues to spread his fantasy. It is no mistake, they are fake newsPicasso finished The demoiselles in August 1907 and of the Campdevànol frescoes, walled up and demolished until 1909, he had not seen even the crumbs.
New iconographic sources
Now, Moreau adds two iconographic sources to The demoiselles: the Romanesque frescoes of Sant Martí de Fenollet and the Devotee Christ of Perpignan. In the spring of 1906, Pijoan urged the publication of Catalan mural paintings, but only a few drawings of Pedret's frescoes were known, and "Brutails pointed out the existence of those by Fenollar." In 1910, the Fenollar fascicle appeared.
Moreau suggests two trips by Picasso to Fenollet to justify the influence of the frescoes on The demoiselles and other works. During a holiday, noted by André Salmon and denied by the artist, in the summer of 1907? According to notes by Gertrude Stein (Richardson, Vol. II), I estimate that it could have been, approximately, from August 4 to 8, or between July 12 and a visit by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Little time to visit friends in Banhòlas or Carcassonne, and from there to Fenollet (259 km x 2, or 140 km x 2), as Moreau suggests. If not, in 1906, from Barcelona: impossible, since Dr. Mercè Vidal in Dance and music as a source of life and creativity by Picasso (2016) documented that they stayed there for a week, not three as Moreau suggests.
The links that Moreau proposes between The demoiselles and these frescoes are based – if they can be considered – on optical microcoincidences. They are affiliations based on generic features (oval face, almond-shaped eyes) of the Romanesque or on a background striping for the Nude in the drapery. It is not consistent.
The Large draped nude (1907) and later The offering (1908) derived from a study for The Avignon Ladies, in which a young lady relates to the sailor who offers her a bag. The model for the couple is a drawing of Mercury and Fortune, scratched into the wall with a stylus, which Picasso found in Gusman's book on Pompeii. Picasso reproduces the metal cut, the double profile of the figures, the absence of a hand, the stripes on the hat, the bag, the attitudes, etc.
A head by Fenollet is not the model for the portrait of Fontdevila (Roman bust in Gusman's book) nor for the self-portrait in Prague (related to Romanesque majesties). No links can be established between Fenollet and these works (1906 and 1907) from the 1972 self-portrait onwards.
Moreau refers to the strange shape under the chin of the crouching young lady in The demoiselles as an "excrescence [...] It is unknown what it is: a tumor, which surprisingly no one has studied" - I don't know for sure - and proposes two meaningless models by Fenollet (a head and the border of the royal mantle). In my thesis I already pointed out that "criticism has not paid attention to this strangeness that cannot be associated with black masks or Iberian sculpture", and I presented the model that inspired Picasso: the Eve of a capital located in the cloister of Sant Pau del Camp, painted by Picasso in 189 Angle of the cloister of Sant Pau del Camp. The strange shape is a large hand under the chin, evoking Eve's shame upon receiving divine reprobation and being expelled from paradise. Picasso reproduces the movement of the arms, the right eye and eyebrow (the other eye and nose, torn from the capital, are drawn traumatically), the lateral mark by the mouth, the ear, the horizontal incisions between the ear and the thumb, the grating of the model's mane. of the brothels. Eve and the carving of the Virgin of Gósol are the only documented Romanesque models for The demoiselles.
Moreau claims as a Picasso model the Devoted Christ of Perpignan, which Cabanne offered as a generic example of the Romanesque features of some demoisellesAnd Moreau is not understood when, in reference to the Large draped nude (derived from The demoiselles), says: "They are paleo-Christian mandorlas profaned by Picasso in their feminine knots." I concluded that The Demoiselles of Avignon They are a temple-brothel in which a great pagan-Christian theophany takes place (not early Christian) in which, basically, Pompeian and Romanesque models coexist, obviously, nude.
Concepción Boncompte Coll holds a PhD in art history and is the author of the thesis "Picassian Iconography 1905-1907. Influence of Pompeian Painting." (2009)