Staring Back: On Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon

This book documents the Fleming Museum of Art’s spring 2015 exhibition, Staring Back: The Creation and Legacy of Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon. It includes a fictional piece that explores the newly revealed connections between Les Demoiselles and a genre of colonial African photographic “erotica” marketed in Paris in the early twentieth century; an essay on the life of the painting from its creation until its purchase by the Museum of Modern Art; and an essay on the audio, video, and other advanced technologies used in the exhibition to reintroduce the ambitious, then twenty-five-year-old Picasso to the public. It also features brief entries on the works of ten contemporary artists in the exhibition—work that engages Les Demoiselles more than a century after its creation.

The text is written in a lively, contemporary manner and will appeal to the general public as well as Picasso scholars.