How Dolls and Masks inspired Picasso

Picasso on Les Demoiselles de Avignon

The masks weren’t just like any other pieces of sculpture.  They were magic things. . . . They were against everything .  . . against unknown, threatening spirits. I always looked at fetishes.  I understood.  I, too, am everything. . . . all the fetishes were used for the same thing.  They were weapons.  To help people avoid coming under the influence of spirits again. To help them become independent.  They’re tools. If we give spirits a form, we become independent.  I understood why I was a painter.  All alone in that awful museum [The Trocadéro] with masks, with dolls made by the Redskins, with dusty manikins . Les Demoiselles d' Avignon must have come to me that day . . .

Public Domain, Les Demoisselles d'Avignon, MOMA 1907