Fractured Forms, Fractured Meanings: A Conceptual, Semiotic, and Psychoanalytic Critique of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

Fractured Forms, Fractured Meanings: A Conceptual, Semiotic, and Psychoanalytic Critique of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) stands as a defining moment in modern art, boldly shattering classical ideals of beauty, perspective, and representation. With its jagged, angular forms, mask-like faces, and confrontational gaze, the painting subverts the visual expectations established by centuries of academic tradition. Rather than adhering to harmonious composition or idealized figures, Picasso presents a raw, fragmented image that seems to despise the art canon of the 1900s and provoke discomfort. This visual rupture helps explain why many extolled the code of what art was supposed to be, as the painting dismantles those very assumptions.

When examined through the lenses of Marcel Duchamp’s conceptual art theory, Roland Barthes’s semiotic analysis, and Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalysis, the work transcends formal innovation and becomes a radical critique of meaning, desire, and authorship. Each of these thinkers offers a distinct entry point to interpret the painting’s ambiguity and power. Duchamp repositions the viewer as an essential co-creator of meaning, Barthes redefines the text (or artwork) as a multi-voiced field, and Lacan interrogates the painting’s challenge to identity and desire. The upshot is that Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is not merely a formal experiment—it is a profound questioning of visual language and the self. More than a historical artifact, it remains a figurehead of modernism’s defiance, reminding us that the questions about what art is linger long after the paint has dried.

Duchamp: Art as Concept, Not Aesthetic Object

Marcel Duchamp’s rejection of “retinal” art, art “intended only to please the eye” (Rosenthal, 2004), finds resonance in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, which prioritizes intellectual engagement over traditional ideals of beauty. As Rosenthal (2004) explains, Duchamp aimed “to put art back in the service of the mind,” distancing himself from purely decorative forms of expression. To uphold the fact that art is not merely about aesthetic pleasure but about conceptual provocation, Duchamp emphasized the role of the viewer as an active participant. He insisted that “the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act” (Duchamp, as cited in Tomkins, 1996, p. 389).

In this light, Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon aligns with Duchamp’s ethos. The painting disrupts the classical nude not only through its fractured forms and mask-like faces but also by rejecting anatomical realism and harmonious composition. The viewer is not offered a singular, idealized scene, but rather a chaotic array of ambiguous female figures. This deliberate lack of clarity seems designed to instill higher order thinking, pushing the viewer to question what each of the five women represents and how they confront or challenge the gaze. Notwithstanding its visual aggression, the painting compels an interpretive process that goes beyond the surface. We can imagine that when it was first exhibited, it triggered a break with traditional retinal art causing many to respond with outrage, as if the very legacy of Western retinal art had been kicked off its hind legs.

Marcel Duchamp’s notion of the infra-thin, “the gap, the in-between, the liminal, the non-retinal, [that] stretch the limits of articulation” (Impossible Objects, n.d.), captures a barely perceptible distinction between two states or phenomena. It refers to the subtle space where meaning trembles between definition and ambiguity, a concept that pushes the boundaries of how we perceive form, identity, and expression. Rather than affirming what is seen, infra-thin invites us to examine what lies hitherto concealed, what slips past the eye but not the mind. In doing so, Duchamp seems to admonish the art establishment for its obsession with clarity, insisting instead on the productive discomfort of the in-between.

This sense of perceptual instability applies powerfully to Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. The five women depicted occupy an unsettling visual space: they are neither fully three-dimensional nor completely flat, neither entirely human nor wholly abstract. Their forms disorient the viewer, who may gather around the painting in affright, unsure of what they’re witnessing. As one attempts to decode the painting, each facial feature seems to hint at a deeper psychological dimension, yet these meanings remain elusive. Like Duchamp’s viewer-participant, I find myself trying to construct meaning, hovering between projection and interpretation. The painting does not offer explanations but invites the viewer to find candor in this ambiguity, an honesty in the unresolved. To admonish the tradition of idealized representation, Picasso fractures the female form, and in doing so, opens a visual dialogue that echoes Duchamp’s later insistence that the concept of art outweighs its material form (Duchamp, 1973). Even today, the canvas elicits both fascination and callous comments, as critics struggle to define what it is they are truly seeing.

Barthes: The Death of the Author and the Disruption of Myth

Roland Barthes’s semiotic theory reveals Les Demoiselles d’Avignon as a rupture in traditional signification. According to Media Studies (n.d.), “In the first order of meaning, the denotation refers to the literal or explicit interpretation of the sign, such as the dictionary definition of a word or a photograph represents the person in the shot. The connotation is an additional meaning which usually expresses an emotion or a value.” By all the unwritten laws of art interpretation, the classical nude traditionally functions as a signifier of beauty, femininity, and erotic availability, especially within the patriarchal gaze. Picasso, however, radically distorts this code. The women in the painting are fragmented and confrontational, their bodies a collage of cubist disjunction, their stares both accusatory and opaque. These figures seem to beseech nautely; they plead silently for a redefinition of what it means to be seen and interpreted, without adhering to aesthetic conventions or submissive idealizations of a retinal art canon.

Barthes’s insight that “myth is neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflexion” (Barthes, 1984) is especially resonant here. Rather than hiding truth, myth reshapes perception. Picasso’s depiction disrupts such mythic visual codes, presenting a version of womanhood stripped of grace and symbolic comfort. The image is not passive or neutral; it is tell-tale of something deeper, something jarring. The figures seem to live at the threshold of visibility, like Plato’s prisoners in the cave, straining to discern what is real and what is projected. They are not merely distorted; they seem to be gagged by centuries of artistic tradition that denied them voice and agency. In this confrontation, the viewer, too, is implicated. One cannot look without discomfort, without being made aware of the weight of myth and the limits of perception. The painting seems to catch the viewer at one’s lowest ebb, disoriented and challenged, where interpretation fails and meaning flickers unsteadily between repulsion and revelation.

Barthes’s concept of the “death of the author” also resonates deeply with the interpretive ambiguity of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. As explained by Oxford Home Schooling (n.d.), “The theory suggests that once a text [painting] is published, it takes on a life of its own and becomes open to interpretation by readers [viewers]. The author’s intention and biography are no longer relevant to the interpretation of the text [painting].” Picasso, who stood at the center of early modernism, is displaced here, not as an absent figurehead, but as an artist whose personal vision no longer holds singular authority. In the miasma of art criticism that surrounds Les Demoiselles, it becomes clear that the work resists closure. Its meaning is not anchored to Picasso’s biography or intention but instead emerges through the interaction of the viewer and the artwork itself.

Rather than producing one authoritative interpretation, as might be expected from retinal art or canonical critique, the painting is quixotic in its refusal to resolve into a single reading. There is no elation in his interpretative gait; Picasso does not guide us gently toward a specific understanding. Instead, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is polysemic, a composite of influences, cultural fragments, and fractured gazes. As Barthes put it, “The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture” (Barthes, 1977, p. 146). Likewise, the painting becomes a site where interpretation is constantly in flux, never stable, always evolving. In that constant movement, viewers may experience a real twinge of meaning, momentary insight amid the abstraction. This process is not finite; it is part of the unabating discussion about what art is, who owns its meaning, and how we engage with visual texts as thinking, feeling subjects.

Lacan: The Gaze, the Mirror Stage, and the Real

Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory provides further insight into how Les Demoiselles d’Avignon unsettles identity and perception. Unlike classical nudes that allow the male gaze to dominate in a one-sided act of visual possession, Picasso’s figures subvert this convention. The five women do not passively accept the gaze; they return it. Their stare confronts the viewer, challenging his assumed control and placing him at the brink of identity, where stable subjectivity begins to unravel. Rather than affirming a secure sense of self, the viewer is left requesting backup, uncertain of how to position himself in relation to the painting’s fierce and fractured femininity.

Lacan’s insight that “what is realized in my history is not the past definitive of what it was… but the future anterior of what I shall have been for what I am in the process of becoming” (Lacan, 1977, p. 86) underscores the instability of identity, always forming, never complete. In this light, Picasso’s women function not as subjects to be read but as symbols that assail one’s identity formation. As Savita & Kaur (2020) assert, “Language is believed to be a significant pillar of the identity formation.” But when that language is suspended, when the image, not the word, dominates, identity becomes volatile. Viewers find themselves in a ravenous search for coherence, scanning each angular figure for meaning, like an art critique in his retinue pursuing answers that remain elusive. The painting offers no narrative, no comfort, only the perpetual confrontation of selves, distorted, dissected, and reassembled.

Lacan’s mirror stage describes the formation of the ego through identification with an external image, a coherent illusion that masks the inner fragmentation of the self. This illusion, however, is adamantly challenged in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, where Picasso presents angular, disjointed bodies that undermine the viewer’s desire for visual harmony. Fragmentation is further articulated in linguistic terms when Savita and Kaur (2020) explain that “one signifier follows the other signifier which makes the identity formation a continuous and an unfinished project. Language will always be a ‘sliding of the signified beneath the signifier.’” In this sense, Picasso’s painting becomes a crate of unstable meanings, packed with visual signs that resist coherence and expose the self as a site of ongoing construction and misrecognition.

Furthermore, the painting evokes Lacan’s concept of the Real, that which lies beyond representation and defies the symbolic order. The mask-like faces and non-naturalistic forms refuse integration into the traditional Western canon of beauty, rendering interpretation an unpropitious endeavor. The viewer stands before the painting like a desponding monarch stripped of his scepter, confronting an image that will not yield to rational understanding. The work incites a throng of responses, confusion, awe, discomfort, as meaning either multiplies excessively or collapses entirely. In this moment of interpretive rupture, the viewer touches the traumatic core of the Real, which remains forever outside the bounds of language and form.

Dylan Evans (1996) elaborates on Lacan’s notion of desire, stating, “Desire is an aspiration in which the subject is always in a state of lack” (p. 45). Les Demoiselles d’Avignon confronts the viewer with this lack, presenting figures that are both alluring and alienating, embodying the unattainable object of desire.

Conclusion: A Site of Conceptual, Semiotic, and Psychological Rupture

Through the combined lenses of Duchamp, Barthes, and Lacan, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon emerges as more than a stylistic breakthrough; it becomes a radical interrogation of artistic tradition, meaning, and subjectivity:

• Duchamp redefines the painting as a conceptual act, not a retinal one.
• Barthes reveals its resistance to dominant semiotic codes and authorial control.
• Lacan exposes the psychological destabilization it provokes in the viewer.

Thus, Picasso’s work challenges the viewer to rethink not only what art is, but how it is seen, interpreted, and internalized. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is not simply a depiction of women; it is a confrontation with fractured vision, unstable identity, and the irreducibility of the Real.

 📚References

Barthes, R. (1977). Image, music, text. (S. Heath, Trans.) New York City: Hill and Wang.

Barthes, R. (1984). Mythologies. New York City: The Noonday Press.

Duchamp, M. (1973). Salt Seller: The Writings of Marcel Duchamp. (M. Sanouillet & E. Peterson, Ed.) Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.

Impossible Objects. (n.d.). How to Isolate the Infrathin: Marcel Duchamp, Raymond Roussel and the Pun. Retrieved from Impossible Objects: https://www.impossibleobjectsmarfa.com/infrathin

Lacan, J. (2006). Écrits. (B. Fink, Trans.) New York City: W. W. Norton & Company.

Media Studies. (n.d.). Roland Barthes. Retrieved from Media Studies: https://media-studies.com/barthes/

Oxford Home Schooling. (n.d.). The Death Of the Author. Retrieved from Oxford Home Schooling: https://www.oxfordhomeschooling.co.uk/blog/the-death-of-the-author/

Picasso, P. (1907). Les Demoiselles d’Avignon [Painting]. Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. Retrieved from https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79766

Rosenthal, N. (2004, October 1). Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968). Retrieved from The MET: https://www.metmuseum.org/essays/marcel-duchamp-1887-1968

Savita, M., & Kaur, G. (2020, April). Language, Identigy and Fragmentation - An Unfinished Project: Lacanian Perspective. International Journal of Creative Research Thoughts (IJCRT), 8(4), 2920-2923. Retrieved from https://ijcrt.org/papers/IJCRT2004411.pdf

Tomkins, C. (1996). Duchamp: A biography. New York City: Henry Holt and Co.

A Framework for Analyzing Non-Retinal Art

1. Identify the Conceptual Intention

• Begin by beseeching nautely the underlying ideas or provocations the artist may have intended, not to reestablish the artist’s authority, but to contextualize the piece within intellectual, cultural, or historical currents.
• Ask: What is this work trying to uphold or disrupt? Is it a response to a prior aesthetic tradition, social issue, or personal ideology?

2. Examine Viewer Engagement Beyond the Visual

• Explore how the work invites higher-order thinking rather than passive visual consumption.
• Identify how the viewer is activated; are we prompted to question, interpret, or participate?
• Use Duchamp’s dictum: is the spectator completing the work through interpretation?

3. Deconstruct Signification Layers (Semiotics)

• Apply Barthes’s first-order (denotation) and second-order (connotation) levels of meaning.
• Look for tell-tale visual signs that challenge or redefine traditional signifiers (e.g., the nude, the face, the gaze).
• Ask: What myths are being assailed or rewritten here? What emotional or cultural inflexions are hitherto concealed?

4. Engage with Psychoanalytic and Identity Theory

• Use Lacanian analysis to examine:
• The mirror stage—how does the piece fragment or reflect identity?
• The gaze—does the artwork return the gaze, thereby disrupting power relations?
• The Real—is there an excess or absence of meaning that destabilizes the symbolic?
• Ask: How does this piece position the viewer at the brink of identity or assail one’s identity formation?

5. Reject the Authorial Monolith

• Apply Barthes’s "Death of the Author": What meanings emerge when the artist is gagged as a controlling authority?
• Let meaning emerge through a “tissue of quotations,” cultural references, and viewer subjectivity.
• Acknowledge the role of your context, biases, and interpretive “baggage” in generating meaning.

6. Embrace Ambiguity and the Infra-Thin

• Search for infra-thin moments, spaces between coherence and incoherence, form and formlessness.
• Accept conceptual instability as intentional. Be ready for no elation in your interpretative gait; uncertainty is part of the journey.

7. Trace the Work’s Impact and Echoes

• Ask: How has the work sparked unabating discussion, outrage, or reinterpretation?
• Has it caused the art community to gather around in affright, respond with hostility, or revise core assumptions?
• Explore its legacy in dismantling or reconstructing norms.

Optional Additions:

• Metaphoric Language: Use poetic or metaphorical language when appropriate to reflect the work’s ambiguity or conceptual density.
• Critical Self-Awareness: Admit when interpretation may be quixotic or speculative. Your voice, as a critic, is part of the piece’s life now.

Fractured Forms, Fractured Meanings by Jonathan Acuña

Sunday, June 01, 2025