Literary essays
October 2018
The Painter Devouring the Female Nude
by Kamel Daoud
One of the greatest Arabic writers revisits the theme of nudes, desire and women. Kamel Daoud spent a night alone in the Picasso Museum, a singular experience that inspired him to write this essay in which he juxtaposes the image of a female nude with the painter and a Jihadist. To Picasso, a woman was a body that could be truly captured only in terms of desire and erotic associations. The nude is also like a self-portrait imprinted on his subject’s flesh. In fact, she devours him, like a cannibal. But how does a Jihadist view this painting? In his view, the woman painted by Picasso is a scandalous anticipation of dream woman who awaits him in paradise, when he dies. She therefore incites disobedience and sin. For the former, she evokes dying of desire. For the latter, killing desire itself or dying in order to satisfy it.
