"Large Reclining Nude (The
Pink Nude)," Henri Matisse, 1935. Oil on canvas from The
Baltimore Museum of Art, The Cone Collection, formed by Dr
Claribel Cone and Miss Etta Cone of Baltimore. Copyright 2003
Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
City.
Masters of
Modernism, Side by Side:
By A. L. Dunnington
NEW YORK CITY
The works of Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, titans of modern
art, are brought together in "Matisse Picasso," a groundbreaking
exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, Queens (MoMA QNS) that
explores the complex personal and artistic relationship between
two men who changed the course of art.
Assembling more than 130 works from around the world, this is the
exhibit's only American venue. The show, which has completed runs
in London and Paris, is a collaborative effort between MoMA; Tate
Modern, London; and the Reunion des musees nationaux/Musee
Picasso, Musee national d'art moderne/Centre Georges Pompidou,
Paris.
The exhibit's timeline begins in 1906, the year Matisse and
Picasso met through American collectors Gertrude and Leo Stein.
Matisse, a Frenchman born to bourgeois parents in 1869, was
already established as a major artist. Picasso, a Spaniard, born
in 1891 to a painter and art teacher, was the ambitious young
renegade nipping at his heels. Matisse became known as "King of
the Fauves," for his bold brushstrokes and radical use of color.
Picasso was to become a founder of Cubism, a more analytical
approach that explored the geometry of forms, and shattered
realism to create increasingly abstract representations.
Viewing their brilliance side-by-side shows how the two artists
evolved as they came to recognize each as the other's true peer.
Mounting the exhibit was a massive undertaking in itself: finding
just the right Matisse to pair with just the right Picasso, to
show how the two developed separately and together, exploring
what seems at times like an elaborate clandestine collaboration,
at other times, like out and out war.
"You've got to be able to picture side-by-side everything Matisse
and I were doing at that time," said Picasso, later in life, of
the period starting roughly in 1907. "No one has ever looked at
Matisse's painting more carefully than I; and no one has looked
at mine more carefully than he."
"Nude in a Black Armchair," Pablo Picasso, 1932. Oil on canvas
from a private collection. Copyright 2003 Estate of Pablo
Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York City.
The show begins with two self-portraits, each done in 1906.
Viewed together, the paintings highlight the initial differences
in style and image between the two.
Matisse's "Self-Portrait," 1906, oil on canvas, presents the
artist, more than ten years Picasso's senior, well established as
a major player within the Paris art scene. His gaze challenges
the viewer, provocatively portraying himself with the bold black
lines and daring color schemes that helped define his art.
By contrast, Picasso's "Self-Portrait with Palette," 1906, oil on
canvas, is muted and minimalist in color, and masklike in
expression: the plain-shirted Picasso looks away from his
audience. One hand holds a palette, while the other appears set
to clutch a brush, but remains empty-handed -- a gesture
interpreted by some as homage to the death of Paul Cézanne, the
iconoclastic French Impressionist who deeply influenced both
Matisse and Picasso.
Two paintings completed shortly thereafter further show each
artist drawing his line in the sand, tossing out a challenge to
the other: Picasso's "Boy Leading a Horse," 1906, oil on canvas,
is hung beside Matisse's "Le Luxe I," 1907, oil on canvas, an
enigmatic work using color and simply drawn female figures. In
both paintings the artists present mystical images that both
compel and confuse.
Kirk Varnedoe, professor of art history at Princeton's Institute
for Advance Study, describes the paintings as "two great visions
of Arcadian lyricism," contrasting Picasso's comparative
conservatism to Matisse's bolder use of color, and his reduction
of the three mythic female figures to mere outlines. Picasso's
nude male adolescent is more traditional, sculptural, Varnedoe
states, adding that: "...The feminine element in this Picasso is
in the horse, this beautiful, elegant animal that the young boy
seems to command to walk beside him by an act of magic."
John Elderfield, MoMA's chief curator at large, agrees that the
absence of reins adds mystery to the Picasso work, which in turn
resembles "...the strange subject of Matisse, where we think of a
Venus coming from the water...but we don't really know what's
going on.'
In both paintings, Elderfield says, the artists embrace the
ancient tradition of storytelling, while subverting it by
creating a story whose meaning is unclear.
Painted during roughly the same period, the two artists go mano a
mano in what Elderfield refers to as "possibly the two most
extraordinary paintings" in the exhibit: Picasso's "Les
Demoiselles D'Avignon," 1907, oil on canvas, and Matisse's
"Bathers with a Turtle," 1908, oil on canvas.
This pairing, on view at the MoMA exhibit only, shows the
dramatically evolving contrast between the two: In 1907, Picasso
saw Matisse's "Blue Nude: Memory of Biskra," whose shocking
female proportions propelled Picasso toward greater radicalism in
his own figures. The result, Picasso's "Demoiselles," also
incorporated the masklike facial marks of African tribal art --
to which Matisse had introduced Picasso -- but which appalled
viewers, including Matisse.
With this painting, it became clear to Matisse that Picasso was
not only mocking some of Matisse's earlier work, but was changing
the course of painting. Matisse responded with "Bathers with a
Turtle" the following spring.
"We know that when Matisse saw 'Demoiselles' he was astounded and
shocked and dismayed," Elderfield says. "It seemed so against all
of the cultivated norms of Western art."
Varnedoe calls "Demoiselles" anti-Matisse "...in its sense that
sexuality is not the cause for a kind of lyric freedom, but a
cause for deep anxiety." As such, Picasso's painting insulted
Matisse's idea of feminine beauty, of a desire to be consoling,
reassuring, harmonious. In response, maintains Elderfield, was
"Bathers with a Turtle," which redefined and asserted Matisse's
own artistic identity.
"What Matisse does is to go to a different kind of so-called
primitivism," Elderfield says. Unlike the harsh assault of
"Demoiselles," "Bathers with a Turtle" is a contemplative,
introverted piece.
A decade later, the creative counterpoint between the two is
apparent in Picasso's "Still Life with Pitcher and Apples," 1919,
oil on canvas, and Matisse's "Bowl of Oranges," 1916, oil on
canvas. Where Picasso's "Still Life" has a classical finish,
suggestive of female sexuality in the curving fullness of the
pitcher and the ripeness of its apples, Matisse's "Bowl," also
composed of curves and rounds, has rougher outlines and focuses
on line and color over form.
Later still, Matisse's "Large Reclining Nude (The Pink Nude),"
1936, oil on canvas, and Picasso's "Girl before a Mirror," 1932,
oil on canvas, both reduce nude female figures to simplified
shapes against backgrounds that share uncannily common elements.
But while Matisse's figures were based on models, Picasso's
figures were based on lovers, this one being Marie-Therese
Walter.
As Maria del Carmen Gonzalez and Susanna Harwood Rubin write in
the exhibition catalog Looking at Matisse and Picasso:
"Both figures appear before similarly patterned backgrounds, and
both are painted in areas of bold flat color. Each painting shows
a woman at a moment of leisure in an abstractly represented
space." However, the writers continue: "As they often did, the
artists reveal different aspects of themselves: Matisse, his life
in his studio; Picasso, a personal relationship."
Throughout, the exhibit explores such commonalities and
contrasts, revealing through the works how each artist grew,
reacting, responding, learning from the other.
"Interior with a Violin," Henri Matisse, 1917-1918. Oil on
canvas from the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen. Johannes
Rump Collection. Copyright 2003 Succession H. Matisse/Artists
RIghts Society (ARS), New York City.
Despite periods in their lives where they saw little of one
another, toward the end, Matisse and Picasso visited more and
more. They were drawn together, Varnedoe remarks, "both as
complementaries, and as fellow feelers."
Together they formed both a mutual competition and admiration
society. When Picasso was once asked what he thought of Matisse's
work, he reputedly responded: "Well, Matisse paints beautiful and
elegant pictures. He is understanding." When Matisse was asked a
similar question about Picasso, his response was: "He is
capricious and unpredictable, but he understands things." And
ultimately, Matisse said, "Only one person has the right to
criticize me...It's Picasso."
The exhibit's final pairing is of two self-representational
paintings made at a time when each artist was undergoing a
personal crisis: Matisse's "Violinist at the Window," 1918, oil
on canvas, was painted while Matisse had sequestered himself in
Nice during Word War I. It captures the artist's sense of
loneliness and isolation as he turns to art for solace, drawing
on recurrent Matissean themes of music, windows and back views.
Picasso's "The Shadow," 1953, oil on canvas, was painted when the
artist was 73: his wife had left him, and in the painting, the
artist's shadow is cast onto a bed where a female figure lays,
just out of reach.
When Matisse died in 1954, in his mid-eighties, it is said the
Picasso was so affected, he refused to attend the funeral.
Instead, he offered this elegy: "In the end, there is only
Matisse."
"Matisse Picasso" runs through May 19 at MoMA QNS, 33 Street
at Queens Boulevard, Long Island City, Queens. Admission is by
timed tickets only: Tickets are $20 ($15.50 for students and
seniors), and can be purchased through Ticketmaster,
212-307-5577, or toll free at 866-879-MOMA. Two publications
accompany the exhibition, Matisse Picasso, a scholarly exhibition
catalog that features in-depth essays by the show's international
team of curators, and Looking at Matisse and Picasso, a lively
introduction to the concept of the exhibition for a general
audience. For additional information, call 212-708-9400, or visit
www.moma.org.
