“Even Picasso’s loyal patron Gertrude Stein deemed the picture a ‘veritable cataclysm.’ And you know what?” Peter Plagens asks. “It’s still pretty ugly. Well, maybe not ugly-ugly, but certainly hard to take. Even with generations of artists trying mightily to out-rad it … the painting refuses to go down smoothly. That’s only one reason, though, why ‘Demoiselles’ is the most important work of art of the last 100 years.”