| ||||
  | ||||
| ||||
| ||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
'Matisse Picasso': Rivalry of masters
From Phil Hirschkorn
NEW YORK (CNN) -- New York's Museum of Modern Art opened the "Matisse Picasso" exhibit Thursday, bringing to the United States the first-ever showing of these two great artists' work side by side under one roof. Matisse and Picasso rank among the best-known and most influential artists of the past century, but retrospectives generally have treated them individually. "Each of them became as great as he was in part by the stimulus of the other," said Kirk Varnedoe, one of six curators behind the exhibit. "Even the greatest artist learns from his peers." For the next three months, MOMA expects as many as 4,000 daily visitors to its temporary home in Queens, a 10-minute subway ride from the museum's Midtown Manhattan home, which is being rebuilt. Open through May 19, the exhibit is not just about the artists' work but also about their relationship. It features nearly 140 paintings and sculptures previously shown together at museums in London and Paris, where the two men lived most of their lives. "It is really quite revealing to see these paintings side by side because sometimes you can see what they've taken from each other, the way they played off each other," said Jack Flam, a Brooklyn College art historian and author of the aptly timed new book, "Matisse and Picasso: The Story of Their Rivalry and Friendship." Half a million people saw the exhibit premiere last summer at London's Tate Gallery. It then went to Paris' Grand Palais, where it was on view until last month. "Picasso was much more famous than Matisse during his lifetime, and this was something that I think played into the rivalry between them," Flam said.
A century ago, Matisse -- a Parisian who was Picasso's elder by 12 years -- was more established and considered cutting edge by the standards of the day. He pioneered the use of bright, harmonious colors and rhythmic lines, a style critics dubbed Fauvism after the French word for wild beasts, "fauves." In 1900, Picasso, a Spaniard, moved to the French capital, where the World's Fair displayed one of his paintings at a time he was struggling for recognition. "They were both looking for not only a market, not only for money, but also for exposure, to get their work known to kind of rise up above the hundreds, if not thousands, of artists who were working in Paris at the time," Flam said. Matisse and Picasso influenced each other's art by exposure to common patrons, such as the American expatriate writer Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo, and by the exchange of paintings soon after they met in 1906. The exhibit begins with self-portraits executed that year. In their first trade, Matisse borrowed a Picasso still life, while Picasso took a Matisse portrait of his daughter. Both of those works are in the show.
"The motivation for this [exhibit] was that Picasso once said that he, Picasso, had looked at Matisse's work more carefully than anyone else, and he had a sense that Matisse had looked at his work more carefully than anyone else," MOMA curator John Elderfield said. Matisse was the more traditional artist, painting what he saw in nature, while Picasso painted more from his imagination. Ultimately he surpassed Matisse in influence by redefining how the human figure could be portrayed, deconstructing the body in a sometimes abstract or violent style that came to be called Cubism. "If Matisse thought of his art as a comfortable chair where a metalworker could lie back in repose after long periods of toil, Picasso's seating had thumbtacks in it," Varnedoe said. "Picasso was much more interested in an art of shock, an art that involved anxiety, doubt, strain." Personal differences also underlay the artists' rivalry in the early years. Matisse was a reserved family man; Picasso was an extroverted womanizer. Matisse painted by day and showed his work in public shows; Picasso painted by night and exhibited in private galleries. After World War II, both men resided in southern France and continued to regard each other as their only true peers. "When they were both older artists, they had reached a kind of eminence and recognized that they were truly pre-eminent in their generations, and they had experiences, they had a notion of painting which nobody else shared," Elderfield said. Matisse died in 1954. Picasso outlived him by nearly two decades, becoming an international celebrity before his death in 1973. The Museum of Modern Art staged exhaustive retrospectives on Picasso in 1980 and on Matisse in 1992. The museum advises the public to obtain timed tickets for "Matisse Picasso" in advance at the museum or via Ticketmaster.
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||
Picasso was much more famous than Matisse during his lifetime, and this was something that I think played into the rivalry between them.
