Vincent van Gogh born near Brabant in 1853 and Pablo Picasso born in Spain in 1881 were to be two of the most influential artists that have ever existed. They were both geniuses who revolusionised the world of painting.
Society in those days was used to seeing classical paintings of respectable people or landscapes, not the world as it was perceived by revolutionary artists. What these two artists managed to do was to break art into different pieces, analyse and experiment all the different possibilities of manipulating and altering paint to get different effects on canvas. Most important of all was, they painted their feelings and how they saw the world around them in their own minds, instead of how everyone perceived it every day. They shook the world and challenged people to view their lives in a different manner and although fresh and new, they broke established outmoded traditions.
Agostina Segatori sitting in Cafe du Tambourin, is one of Van Gogh's works painted in 1887 in Paris, and Les Demoiselles d"Avignon painted by Picasso are two paintings that although similar are different in that Van Gogh's has more realism and Picassos's is cubist in style. .
Van Gogh tries to change the image of women in those days by painting them smoking and drinking beer. His painting challenged the fact that women were feminine and would never do these things, let alone be seen doing them.
The woman in the painting is dressed and posed in a less seductive manner, .
it is not that obvious that she is a prostitute like the women in Picasso's work . We can appreciate the tonal range of colours and how the background of the painting is blurred, making her stand out more in the painting itself. Her face is expressing sadness and makes the atmoshere look depressing. There are lots of feelings in this painting suggesting that it was hard to be a woman in those days as they were suppressed by a patriarchial society.
