Matisse vs. Picasso

Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso were towering figures in the world of avant-garde painting in the early twentieth century. It might interest afficionados of the arts to know that color was not simply restricted to the canvases they graced. There was, in fact, a dynamic off-canvas relationship between these two contemporaries.

Though it began without a common ground and was fueled at first by rivalry, uncomplementary personalites, a discrepancy in age, and the clash of two very different approaches to art, it would be Picasso's re-interpretations of Matisse's works in his own preferred style that would help to buoy Matisse's flagging career and encourage him to rediscover his creative direction. In the end, the relationship would grow beyond all hint of petty competition, even the comfortable detachment of mutual respect, into genuine friendship.

To know the ego that accompanied Picasso's genius is not any great talent in it's own right. That arrogance and superciliousness went hand in hand with his artistry is widely accepted. It is this fact, however, that makes his rare regard for Matisse that much more fascinating.

Stylistically-speaking, they could not be much further apart. Picasso excelled in the tenets of cubism: geometry, rectilinearity, statics and bounded space, three-dimensional simultaneity, transparency, and so on. There is a draftsman-like quality to his use of line. Though he did not limit himself to the style he helped create, he has nonetheless become synonymous with it.

Matisse, in contrast, explored a world that tended toward a relative lack of depth and a use of perspective that tended to flatten out the image. He had an exceptional understanding of how color affects emotion, a voluptuous, sensual fluidity that relegated line to that of secondary consideration, a love of arabesques and amorphous space where objects appeared to float unbounded in a dreamlike ganzfeld of homogeneous color, and a tendency toward a warmer palette and themes in his more noteable works.

Their personalities and their separate journeys to the canvas again juxtapose and offset one another elegantly, and they would ultimately intertwine in a relationship that would transcend the base desires to achieve a superiority of style. It was the acquiesence that art is art, regardless of style.

Bold as it was, though, it was perhaps even an ominous gesture, both symbolic and foreboding of an impending artistic dystopia. Pluralism would continue to liberate the stylistic pallete, defy artistic definition, and divorce art from all notion of tradition, formalism, content, and representational conventions. It would also continue to widen the floodgates through which could then flow an unebbing tide of art of, by, and for the people. But would the democratization of the medium serve its masters well?

I will touch on that subject in a future post, but for anyone interested enough to press on, here are several links on the relationship between Matisse and Picasso: http://www.matisse-picasso.com & http://www.matissepicasso.com