s of human experience in a new light. Science was discovering the uncertainties of existence. The atomic world showed that the reality we perceive through the sense is not the only reality. Psychology was showing that behavior was more complex than previously imagined and that there was an entire world of relationships and forces that was hidden. The ambiguities and uncertainties that this new knowledge created was expressed in different ways by artists in different fields. In painting it was seen in the abstractions of artists as widely varied as Duchamps, Picasso, Klee, and many others. Picasso's works were involved with a new way of depicting perceptions, seeking the essence of a subject rather than a strict recreation of reality. Andre Breton stated that Picasso was an heir to Surrealism.
The Museum of Modern Art exhibited the painting along with other Picasso works in 1972. The painting was then described as a modern recreation of the traditional Vanity image and was said to offer multilevel poetic allusions and to be marked by its color and design:
The balance and reciprocity of the expressive and the decorative here set a standard for all Picasso's subsequent painting--indeed, for twentieth-century art as a whole.
In earlier works by Picasso, this equilibrium had been difficult to achieve. Erotic and psychological expression had been evident in the Bathers of the late twenties, but it had been achieved at some cost in pictorial richness and complexity. Pure decorative virtuosity had become an end in itself in pictures such as Pitcher and Bowl of Fruit from 1931. These divergent tendencies were resolved in Girl Before a Mirror. It is believed that the catalyst for this picture was not the processes of painting as much as it was Picasso's love for the sensual model, Marie-ThTrFse Walter, whose image had first appeared in paintings from the previous year and who now served as the model for Girl Before a Mirr...