Avant-garde artists in the early years of the twentieth century strove to find a new vocabulary for art and a new way forward. Artists such as Matisse, Braque, Vlaminck and Picasso produced works which were not only ground-breaking but shockingly innovative. The resulting break-throughs, though, were often incomprehensible even to the most ardent of supporters.

    Picasso’s ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’ is now acclaimed as a revolutionary work of Modern art, but when Picasso first unveiled it to his friends, they were bewildered. Visitors to early avant-garde exhibitions were reported to have ‘laughed their heads off.’ The public felt they were being duped and collectors were bemused and uncertain.  

      How, then, could artists explain their new approaches and convince collectors and the public to appreciate what they were doing? How could they manage to sell paintings of such extraordinary modernity?

    The task, for a modern artist, was a tricky matter of negotiating a variety of complex options. Should they sign up to a dealer, who might tie them into an exclusive lock-in? Should they hold an exhibition, use a private gallery, or try to exhibit at conventional salons which found their works so alien? Was their time best spent attending the salons of collectors such as Gertrude Stein and Peggy Guggenheim, stealing a march on their fellow artists in the race for new ideas or hobnobbing with Bohemian society?

     Taking the period 1900-1939, this lecture examines the paintings produced and the ideas behind them to show the struggle artists went through to elicit interest in and understanding of their works, works which now sell for millions.