Compare and contrast two of 20 th century works at Moma.

The Guitar

Created in 1912 at the beginning of his Synthetic Cubist phase , the Guitar sculpture may have the same outline of a real model , but the form is distorted to allow for the inclusion of another dimension . According to the Museum of Modern Art , he shatters the form . If the front of a guitar is a plane conceal a volume , he cuts that plane away , opening up the interior as an empty bloc . If the sound hole is ordinarily a void he gives it substance , turning it into a projecting cylinder . Viewed

br frontally , the cylinder 's open rim becomes a line drawing of the sound hole . Here , Picasso has opened up the central core of sculpture allowing us to see into and through it

Also , he revolutionized the field of sculpture by choosing unlikely subjects and using different materials . For example , most sculpture up to the time was constructed from marble or bronze and their subjects were often human or mythological figures . In Guitar , he immortalizes the inanimate by sculpting it out of sheet metal and wire , transforming the every day into a work of high art . Looking at it in two-dimensional form (i .e . the MOMA web page , or an art book , it appears to be constructed within a cardboard box enclosure , with a toilet roll at the center . There are three strings bent as if forever playing a chord . Like his seminal painting Les Demoiselles d 'Avignon , he adopts a cubist style , however , there is not as much color involved

Les Demoiselles d 'Avignon

Les Demoiselles d 'Avignon was painted in his African-Influenced phase It depicts five naked prostitutes in a brothel in a French town . Picasso drew each of them differently . The one sitting down in the right hand corner has the most distorted face - almost mask-like . Her features appear to twist in different directions . The second woman has a dark face and fair body , as does her companion on the extreme left side of the drawing . Perhaps the masks and the unnatural coloration of three women is a symbol of mortality and the ultimate relationship between sex and death . This is especially true of prostitutes , who are known carriers of a whole host of sexually transmitted diseases

The two women in the middle look the most normal , take alone they would not be recognizably cubist , with the possible exception of their flat squarish bodies . Women were traditionally painted to be rounded and voluptuous - the standard of beauty in the Victorian Era . Some cite this painting as one of the first masterpieces of modern art . There is a bowl of fruit in the front of the photo , but its negligible size shows its relative lack of importance . According to the Museum of Modern Art , it was the result of months of preparation and revision , this painting revolutionized the art world when first seen in Picasso 's studio . Its monumental size underscored the shocking incoherence resulting from the outright sabotage of conventional representation Picasso drew on...