Monday, July 22, 2013

MORE ABOUT PICASSO AND MATISSE


As the title suggests, this is about Picasso and Matisse and how their competition with each other helped to spur them both to greatness. I'm not an expert on this subject so if a reader catches a mistake I hope he'll let me know about it so I can change it. 

Anyway, a good place to start is this painting (above) from late in Picasso's Cubist period. He must have gotten bored with Cubism by this time because he seems to be flirting with representational painting again and with brighter color.


I think what jolted him out of Cubism was this picture (above) by Matisse. It was shockingly flat and colorful, and suggested a whole new way of depicting figures.


Picasso responded (above) by going even farther down the road Matisse had taken. Picasso flattened out his characters even more than Matisse had, and intensified and abstracted his color fields. I think he was also influenced by newspaper comics.

Actually this picture is probably from his slightly later "Heroic" period, but it still makes my point.   



Matisse (above) responded to Picasso by introducing colorful patterns into his work. The whole canvas was now vibrant with pattern.


Picasso followed Matisse's background-as-pattern idea (above) and upped the ante by abstracting the background more than his rival. It didn't exactly work. Matisse's backgrounds were warm and inviting, Picasso's were clever but cold. 


Maybe sensing that Matisse was beating him, Picasso devoted himself to making his  shapes and color more rounded and pleasing (above). Finally he hit on the marvelous color and line patterns that we call his "Heroic Period." In my opinion this was when Picasso did his best work.


Finally Matisse died. Without the Frenchman's ideas to spur him on Picasso lapsed into abstraction (above) for its own sake.


These new canvases (above) were cold and lifeless. You see Matisse's influence but Picasso can't find a way to make it work for him.

Interesting, eh?

5 comments:

  1. It sounds like a healthy rivalry that these two geniuses had. There was quite a lot of this kind of competition during the Golden Age of Animation with various studios like Warner Bros., Disney, MGM and others competing with each other to make better cartoons though many copycats and knock off studios existed too.

    You know much more about art history then I do, so I'm gonna assume that your post was about as accurate as you could get it to be.

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  2. Hello Eddie, I hope you'll pardon the non sequitur but I have a question that I think you'll have an answer to.

    Can you recommend any Shakespeare performances that are available on VHS/DVD to me?

    It's too damn hard to read the plays! I start to zone out, I can't help it, and then I don't know who's speaking.

    Waddaya say? Can you recommend some performances? PBS? BBC? Royal Shakespeare? A movie from the 70s, 50s, 30s?

    I gotta have the bard!

    Thanks n_n

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  3. Jeff: Shakespeare on film? I recommend Olivier's versions of Richard III, Hamlet and Henry V.
    Also Zeffereli's (spelled right?) version of Romeo and Juliet.

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  4. I went to the Museum of Modern Art in New York this summer. On the fifth floor they displayed their Picasso pieces with their Matisse.
    Later that same week I randomly wound up in a conversation with a stranger. Right away I discerned he was and artist and we got into a conversation about Picasso and Matisse. He said Matisse resented Picasso in the beginning. Picasso was brash and knew how to market himself well. Their rivalry evolved into a conversation of sorts and when Matisse died Picasso had no one to talk to.
    His opinion. Interesting conversation. As was this post.

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