Dr. Suzanne Blier presents a lecture entitled Picasso's Demoiselles: Africa, Sex, Evolution, and Identity.

Pablo Picasso’s iconic painting, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, considered one of the most important and iconic paintings of the twentieth century, is also one of its least understood. This lecture examines this famous 1907 canvas, and several other works of this era, from the vantage of newly discovered sources that offer vital clues into its dating and compositional development, as well as its provocative subject matter and notably variant styles. In the end this canvas will be seen to speak not only to issues of sex and race but also questions of origins and evolution.

Suzanne Preston Blier is an historian of African art and architecture in both the History of Art and Architecture and African and African American Studies Departments at Harvard University. She also is a member of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science.

This lecture is co-sponsored by the Department of Classics and UT Libraries.