| I like Matisse, I mean I really like his paintings, so | | | | easily identifiable, blur your gaze even a little, the |
| do many people, but not many as like Picasso. In | | | | slightest squint and it could as easily dissipate, |
| fact not near as many like Matisse, a fraction | | | | reality is on the brink of being dissolved, of course |
| perhaps, a thin slice of the art world. Everybody | | | | many were going to be appalled. He and his |
| knows Picasso, to many he is the King of Art. But | | | | cronies were branded as Les Fauves, The Wild |
| Matisse dwells in the shadows, poor Matisse, if it | | | | Beasts, a strange moniker for the reserved and |
| means much, I for one prefer Matisse. Picasso | | | | composed Matisse. But modern art was incoming, |
| grabs the headlines, his was a life of extremes in | | | | dealers began buying up Fauve paintings, their star |
| everything, he dominated and most were inhibited | | | | was in the ascendant. The movement itself |
| by him. He was the One, a maverick. Whereas | | | | dissipated, the actual association amongst the |
| Matisse was immersed in the new movements of | | | | primary artists had always being quite loose. |
| art, encouraging and helping, a teacher and so in | | | | Matisse moved on, settling into the dynamic |
| the strangest of ways part of the system. | | | | artistic community in Montparnasse, Paris, although |
| Picasso never was part of the system, he was | | | | he was a man apart with his conservative |
| much greater than the system. Matisse was the | | | | appearance and conventional work methods. |
| older, born in 1869, the year when Ulysses S. | | | | Montparnasse, is where the great Matisse first |
| Grant moved into the White House, Tolstoy | | | | met the great Picasso, it was to become a |
| finished War and Peace and the Suez canal was | | | | tremendous relationship that was as fractious as |
| going to change everything, Matisse most | | | | it was respectful, as rambunctious as it was |
| definitely had one foot mired defiantly in the | | | | encouraging. They were polar opposites in most |
| gloomy mid eighteenth century past, he would | | | | things but they were united in the fact that they |
| however not be bogged down by it. He died in | | | | were two of the greatest artists on the planet. |
| 1954 and so lived through one of the most | | | | Picasso more adamant and vocal in these |
| traumatic and metamorphic one hundred years of | | | | matters, stated confidently that Matisse was the |
| human existence and through it all he painted and | | | | only artist in the world his equal. Picasso |
| painted and painted. And yet, he painted beauty, | | | | recognised the unparalleled mastery that Matisse |
| unlike Picasso and other modernists, he never | | | | had over colour, he tried to best him, knowing |
| tore away the past, never ripped up to proceed, | | | | that he never really could. But it raised his game |
| he just simply stepped from it, painting in | | | | and he became a marvellous colourist himself. It |
| equilibrium, Zen like. Perhaps, being a child of | | | | was a reciprocal relationship, Picasso was on |
| pre-Industrial Revolution, Matisse realised that the | | | | another planet as regards his qualities as a |
| past held the key to a proper Golden Age, an | | | | draftsman and similarly it forced Matisse to work |
| opening up of Arcadian fantasises. Or perhaps, he | | | | extremely hard at his own drawing skills. Feeding |
| was terrified of the rapidly changing world that | | | | off one another, they became dependant, indeed, |
| appeared to be gladly flinging it's way headlong | | | | when in the mid-thirties Matisse withdrew from |
| into Armageddon, perhaps he was painting the | | | | painting, Picasso began to quote and parody |
| beauty, so he could live it, in peace and serenity. | | | | Matisse in his work, urging him to come back, to |
| John Peter Russell introduced Matisse to | | | | enter the arena once again, to not leave him |
| Impressionism while Henri visited him at his artist's | | | | alone, can you honestly see Pablo doing that for |
| colony in Brittany. Colour became a kaleidoscope, | | | | anybody else? Indeed, many art critics are of the |
| Matisse was on his way. Russell also introduced | | | | belief, that the two began to paint for one |
| him to the post-Impressionism of van Gogh, who | | | | another, that there were coded messages of |
| would remain a life-long influence as would Rodin, | | | | daring and challenge contained within their work |
| Gaugin and Signac. But it was in Cezanne, that | | | | which they knew few others would derive. They |
| Matisse would lose himself, purchasing Three | | | | intrigued one another, amazed at the fact that |
| Bathers and using it forever as a talisman. In time | | | | there was another on the globe who could paint |
| nobody would control colour as Matisse controlled | | | | what they could not. In the forties they began |
| colour, his mastery being first on display in his | | | | exchanging gifts of their art, in one such |
| wonderful The Open Window (1905). The open | | | | exchange, Picasso gave Matisse Portrait of DORA |
| window would become a motif to which Matisse | | | | MAAR, and received Seated Young Woman in a |
| would return time and time again, the original is | | | | Persian Dress in return. It is a pointed exchange, |
| one of my personal favourites, I could gaze | | | | DORA MAAR contains the horror and anguish that |
| through that window for ages, so soothing, so | | | | was beyond Matisse, while Seated Young Woman |
| calming, so in the moment and nowhere else. But | | | | in a Persian Dress is the innocence and purity that |
| oh how the world has changed! For in 1905, | | | | so alluded Picasso. The quote that I think most |
| Matisse was branded a barbarian by hordes of | | | | sums up their relationship belongs to Matisse, who |
| detractors, blue was no longer the sky, green | | | | once said to Picasso 'we must talk to each other |
| was no longer the grass, the world was in chaos | | | | as much as we can. When one of us dies, there |
| or so legions professed. Matisse had arrived, | | | | will be things the other will never be able to talk |
| everything was going to be different, | | | | about with anyone else', it is as stunning as it is |
| brushstrokes went every which way, space is not | | | | poignant. |