TY - JOUR T1 - From the Museum: the Art of Thinking. Part Seven: Perspective JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J SP - 592 LP - 593 DO - 10.1183/09031936.00440314 VL - 44 IS - 3 AU - Tom Kotsimbos Y1 - 2014/09/01 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/44/3/592.abstract N2 - Les Demoiselles d'Avignon was an explosion of intuitive creativity that took a quantum leap forward in reshaping our perspective of art and the modern world. Picasso's Demoiselles proclaimed the future as they echoed the monumental nudes and mythical forms of the past. It was a painting that was “destroyed” before it was “created”; analysed as deconstruction before synthesised into something completely new (rivalling the Renaissance in its novel approach to perspective); and as individual and precocious in its execution as multi-dimensional in the forces that shaped it. Five heroic, sharply stylised nudes whose planar shapes exude the primitive dissonant power of forms are crowned by magnetic heads that stare straight at us through angular eyes and medusa-like faces. Their bodies dramatically confront us even though they are rigidly suspended in their surroundings – a fused hardness that contrasts with the transitoriness of impressionism. There is no stillness: no fixed focal point or single source of light; and no floor, horizon or uniform sense of depth. The integrity of mass as distinct from space has now been fragmented as dissected anatomies give us multiple perspectives simultaneously. Muted colour further emphasises form whilst use of the full colour spectrum (pink hued contours of the nudes set off by icy blue panes) allows for an alternative interpretation of depth perspective. ER -