Picasso’s Two Nudes and the genderfluid structure of narcissism

In Picasso’s Two Nudes (1906) a leg dissolves into the ground upon which it stands; a breast appears unnaturally hard and roughly textured; a face projects androgynous, mask-like features toward the viewer. These large nudes are lost in self-absorption, leading scholars to unequivocally consider this painting a meditation on narcissism. However, scholars often devote time to its importance as the proto-cubist bellwether of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) without sufficiently attending to the manner in which Picasso treats its theme. Enlisting the aid of Lou Andreas-Salomé’s provocative and unorthodox theory of self-love, this essay discusses Picasso’s tendency to depict narcissism as a genderfluid space of experimentation and free-play, where bodies connect to the world around them in a primal way that confounds the empirical certainty of the optically oriented observer. To consider narcissism within Two Nudes and Picasso’s oeuvre more broadly provides significant insight into the artist’s understanding of self-love, gender, and creativity, and suggests that a degree of narcissism may be fundamental for seeing oneself indivisibly connected to the world at large.