The most influential work of modern art

From Clare Margetson at the Guardian Art Blog - The most influential work of modern art, commenting on a Newsweek feature (worth reading btw). For once, they seem to have came up with a pretty good answer: Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (a stunning and revolutionary painting based, in part, on a photo postcard...):

"The new edition of Newsweek asks a familiar question, Which is the most influential work of art of the last 100 years? The answer, according to Peter Plagens: Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

No great shock there. I can still remember the first time I was shown the slide of this extraordinary work by my history of art teacher and told this was the painting that changed modern art. It seemed brutal, extraordinary, ugly, yet exciting, to my untrained eye. My teacher certainly never mentioned Marcel Duchamp's Fountain - the chilly looking urinal, marked R.Mutt, that in a survey of 500 artists and curators, beat Picasso to the top spot (Les Demoiselles came second, Warhol's Marilyn Diptych third).

Tyler Green on his blog today makes a good case, on the other hand, for Matisse's Blue Nude, although Matisse didn't figure at all in the artists' survey. Should Matisse have been there? Or should he forever play second fiddle to Picasso?

And, if you were to think of the most influential work of the last 20 years, what would that be? Sharks, beds, white blocks ... I suppose it is too early to say."

Or Damian Hirst's diamond skull... nope