biggest surprise at the MoMA yesterday

Just how big Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” is. When reading the accounts of Picasso turning the painting backwards in his studio after receiving much criticism from his friends (Leo Stein called it “a terrible mess” and André Derain said Picasso would commit suicide due to the critics’ reactions if he ever showed it, while only Braque seemed taken by it) I always pictured it as a discreet little object tucked away in a corner. But it’s a colossal physical object.

Even bigger, of course, is Jackson Pollock’s super-gigantic “Number One,” but I wasn’t surprised by that.