Describe the characteristics of the African and Iberian art in this artwork's Influences.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, Europe's colonization of Africa led to many economic, social, political, and even artistic encounters. From these encounters, Western visual artists became increasingly interested in the unique forms of African art, particularly masks from the Niger-Congo region. In an essay by Dennis Duerden, author of African Art (1968), The Invisible Present (1972), and a former director of the BBC World Service, the mask is defined as "very often a complete head-dress and not just that part that conceals the face". This form of visual art and image appealed to Western visual artists, leading to what Duerden calls the "discovery" of African art by Western practitioners, including Picasso.The stylistic sources for the heads of the women and their degree of influence has been much discussed and debated, in particular the influence of African tribal masks, art of Oceania, and pre-Roman Iberian sculptures. The rounded contours of the features of the three women to the left can be related to Iberian sculpture, but not obviously the fragmented planes of the two on the right, which indeed seem influenced by African masks. Lawrence Weschler says that, in many ways, much of the moldering cultural and even scientific ferment that characterized the first decade and a half of the twentieth century and that laid the foundations for much of what we today consider modern can be traced back to ways in which Europe was already wrestling with its bad-faith, often strenuously repressed, knowledge of what it had been doing in Africa. The example of Picasso virtually launching cubism with his 1907 Desmoiselles d’Avignon, in response to the sorts of African masks and other colonial booty he was encountering in Paris’s Musee de l’Homme, is obvious.
Private collections and illustrated books featuring African art in this period were also important. While Picasso emphatically denied the influence of African masks on the painting: "African art? Never heard of it!" (L'art nègre? Connais pas!), this is belied by his deep interest in the African sculptures owned by Matisse and his close friend Guiliaume Apollinaire. Since none of the African masks once thought to have influenced Picasso in this painting were available in Paris at the time work was painted, he is thought now to have studied African mask forms in an illustrated volume by anthropologist Leo Frobenius. Primitivism continues in his work during, before and after the painting of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, from spring 1906 through the spring of 1907. Influences from ancient Iberian sculpture are also important. Some Iberian reliefs from Osuna, then only recently excavated, were on display in the Louvre from 1904. Archaic Greek sculpture has also been claimed as an influence.
Contentions about the influence of African sculpture were fueled in 1939 when Alfred Barr said the primitivism of the Demoiselles derived from the art of Côte d'Ivoire and the French Congo. Picasso subsequently insisted his catalogue raissonne’s editor Christian Zervos publish a disclaimer in which Picasso certified that he was not aware of African art until after Demoiselles was completed, but that he had instead drawn from Iberian art he had seen a year or so earlier, in particular from the Louvre’s Osuna reliefs. Contradictingly, in 1944 Picasso recounted seeing African art and being greatly moved by it during Demoiselles’  creation, adding that the experience was revelatory and a pivotal moment in the painting’s formulation. To Andre Malraux he said the revelations of African sculpture came to him from visiting to the Ethnographic Museum of the Trocadero. As Picasso recalled, "When I went to the Trocadero, it was disgusting. The flea market, the smell. I was all alone. I wanted to get away, but I didn't leave. I stayed, I stayed. I understood that it was very important. Something was happening to me, right. The masks weren't like any other pieces of sculpture, not at all. They were magic things." Maurice de Vlaminck is often credited with introducing Picasso to African sculpture of Fang extraction in 1904.Picasso biographer John Richardson recounts in A Life of Picasso, The Cubist Rebel 1907–1916 art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler's recollection of his first visit to Picasso's studio in July 1907. Kahnweiler remembers seeing "dusty stacks of canvases" in Picasso's studio and "African sculptures of majestic severity". Richardson comments: "so much for Picasso's story that he was not yet aware of Tribal art.'" A photograph of Picasso in his studio surrounded by African sculptures c.1908, is found on page 27 of that same volume.Suzanne Preston Blier says that, like Gauguin and several other artists in this era, Picasso used illustrated books for many of his preliminary studies for this painting. In addition to the Frobenius book, his sources included a 1906 publication of a twelfth-century Medieval art manuscript on architectural sculpture by Villiard de Honnecourt and a book by Carl Heinrich Stratz of pseudo-pornography showing photos and drawings of women from around the world organized to evoke ideas of human origins and evolution. Blier suggests that this helps account for the diversity of styles Picasso employed in his image-filled sketchbooks for this painting. These books, and other sources such as cartoons, Blier writes, also offer hints as to the larger meaning of this painting.
Osuna Tribal art art dealer Cubist BBC Iberian fr Picasso Fang Lawrence Weschler primitivism Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler colonization of Africa Archaic cubism John Richardson Andre Malraux Leo Suzanne Preston Blier Maurice de Vlaminck Villiard de Honnecourt Louvre African Ethnographic Museum of the Trocadero relief Gauguin Iberian sculpture African tribal masks Alfred Barr African sculptures Carl Heinrich Stratz Christian Zervos Leo Frobenius tribal masks Côte d'Ivoire art of Oceania African art left Guiliaume Apollinaire BBC World Service