Henri Matisse vs. Pablo Picasso
Gertrude Stein introduced Matisse and Picasso in 1906. their challenge of opposites would continue even beyond Matisse’s death. These two great painters and sculptors of the 20th century bounced off each other, outdid each other, honored each other, and occasionally ignored each other, in ways that were sometimes calculated, sometimes instinctive, and sometimes fortuitous. Despite perceiving themselves as rivals, Picasso and Matisse began to meet regularly and subject each other’s work to intense scrutiny. Whether they approved or disapproved of what the other was up to, they understood each other as only two titans could. As Picasso told one of his biographers, Pierre Daix, “You have got to be able to picture side by side everything Matisse and I were doing at that time. No one has ever looked at Matisse’s painting more carefully than I; and no one has looked at mine more carefully than he.”
Picasso had picked Matisse’s wonderfully bold portrait of his daughter, Marguerite—a painting as straightforward and literal as an inn sign—for a very precise reason. Matisse’s young sons had just begun to draw, and the instinctive simplifications of their childish imagery had opened their father’s eyes to a hitherto untapped form of primitivism—one that was mercifully free of the witch doctor’s baggage associated with the tribal and Oceanic sculpture that both artists collected. Picasso said he had been fascinated to see how Matisse’s children’s drawings had enabled their father to flatten, simplify, and above all modernize not only this portrait but also a number of other major works at this crucial period of change.
Unfortunately, troublemakers told Matisse that the Picasso gang were not only mocking his painting but also using it as a target for flèches à ventouses ( darts that have asucion cup instead of a point) “Got her in the eye” (or the cheek or the nose), Picasso’s groupies would gleefully shout. Later, Picasso claimed to have been mortified by their behavior, mortified, too, that he had done nothing to stop it.
Matisse was outraged. He talked of getting even with Picasso, and for that reason the two artists watched each other even more warily than before. Ironically, Picasso’s breakthrough masterpiece, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907)—his revolutionary response to Le Bonheur de Vivre—is deeply indebted to Matisse’s shockingly naked Blue Nude of a few months earlier. Matisse had unwittingly helped Picasso take his (Matisse’s) place at the head of the avant-garde. Picasso would certainly have agreed with T. S. Eliot’s observation that “immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.”
Picasso had picked Matisse’s wonderfully bold portrait of his daughter, Marguerite—a painting as straightforward and literal as an inn sign—for a very precise reason. Matisse’s young sons had just begun to draw, and the instinctive simplifications of their childish imagery had opened their father’s eyes to a hitherto untapped form of primitivism—one that was mercifully free of the witch doctor’s baggage associated with the tribal and Oceanic sculpture that both artists collected. Picasso said he had been fascinated to see how Matisse’s children’s drawings had enabled their father to flatten, simplify, and above all modernize not only this portrait but also a number of other major works at this crucial period of change.
Unfortunately, troublemakers told Matisse that the Picasso gang were not only mocking his painting but also using it as a target for flèches à ventouses ( darts that have asucion cup instead of a point) “Got her in the eye” (or the cheek or the nose), Picasso’s groupies would gleefully shout. Later, Picasso claimed to have been mortified by their behavior, mortified, too, that he had done nothing to stop it.
Matisse was outraged. He talked of getting even with Picasso, and for that reason the two artists watched each other even more warily than before. Ironically, Picasso’s breakthrough masterpiece, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907)—his revolutionary response to Le Bonheur de Vivre—is deeply indebted to Matisse’s shockingly naked Blue Nude of a few months earlier. Matisse had unwittingly helped Picasso take his (Matisse’s) place at the head of the avant-garde. Picasso would certainly have agreed with T. S. Eliot’s observation that “immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.”