70

inventions, fearing that Picasso would steal some trivial idea on which they had staked their hopes of fame. They knew what he was capable of doing. Picasso warned, "To copy others is necessary but to copy oneself is pathetic. (Picasso qtd. Penrose 191). He was most at ease working with images suggested to him which he could alter through the magic of metamorphosis. He could find his subjects anywhere. According to Francoise Gilot, Picasso often said, "When there's anything to steal, I steal." (Picasso qtd. Gilot).

Picasso tried to integrate all these various influences. Some feel that he never really resolved the work, leaving the many different directions for us to witness in its unresolved state. Rubin called "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon "a laboratory in which Picasso attempted to discover the deeper nature of his own erotic desire by probing the mysteries of what Freud called the life forces, the primal source of procreation, in which sexual activity and artistic creativity are as yet undifferentiated. But Picasso soon found that in order to comprehend Eros, he has also to confront Thanatos. He would use the knowledge gained as he himself later made clear-to overcome anxieties and exorcise personal demons. (Rubin 18).

"Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" would eventually rise from the obscurity of its beginnings to achieve international fame and to become the centerpiece of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. It predicted Picasso's future work and anticipated the course of art during the twentieth-century.

70