How Did Canaday Characterize Picasso's Attitude Towards Women

A) Some of the words that Canaday used to characterize Picasso that I thought were the most significant were that Picasso was decisive, dynamic, and relentless. These three descriptors stood out to me because they can be used to describe not just Picasso himself, but how his work developed over time. The constant growth and changing of styles that Picasso underwent throughout his artistic career, much of which can be considered dynamic and against the grain, was truly remarkable. Canaday’s use of the term decisive, for me, was probably most poignant. This is because Picasso’s work, just like modern art in general, can be very schismatic. People either love it or hate it. B) From the reading I determined that Picasso underwent six stylistic …show more content…
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