Via Tyler Green I heard about Newsweek’s Peter Plagen’s thoughts about the most influential work of art of the last 100 years - Peter thinks its Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.

This is a lot to do about nothing since we can not know what was truly the most influential painting in the last century.  I’d suggest that if Peter Plagen really wants to know the answer to his own question, he could ask every well known living artist what single painting influenced them the most.  Add to that, all the dead artists over the last 100 years who you can historically read about and find out which painting(s) were most important.

Then you would rate the influence of each artist based on what was known about them, both the influence of the artist on contemporaries and the current influence of the artist after their death.

Then.. with all that information, create a numerical score by multiplying the score of the painting by the score of the artist(s) who admired it, adding up scores for the same painting from different artists.  Also do the same thing with influential dealers and art critics and find out what paintings they felt were most influential, if you can.

Finally, you’d have a score for each painting and then you could sort them from higher score down to lowest and have a much better idea of what paintings were the most influential over the last 100 years.

“…And of course Les Dems is too. Jack Flam also wrote about Les Dems as springing from Blue Nude, pointing out that while Picasso certainly took something from African sculpture (as Picasso oft claimed), he was only able to do it after Matisse showed him how.

Flam also notes that Picasso remained obsessed with Blue Nude for many decades. Flam points to 1934’s Nude in a Garden. And there are Blue Nude-type figures in Picasso all the way through his Women of Algiers series: In this 1955 example Picasso makes his reference to Matisse as clear as possible.

Sure, Les Dems is more famous. But Picasso needed Blue Nude to make it, and for decades thereafter.

Or, you can just ask Picasso and Matisse (as quoted above), get their favorite paintings - declare those paintings the most influential (since you might assume Picasso and Matisse were the two most influential painters in the last 100 years) and be done with it!