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Story by Jack Foley
FORGET
body parts and fleshy controversy, the hottest art ticket this summer looks
set to be the new Matisse Picasso exhibition at the Tate Modern,
which can be seen until August 18.
The exhibition opened on Saturday (May 11, 2002) and attracted a colossal 4,823 visitors (at £10 a ticket), while 4,307 poured through the turnstiles on Sunday.
The show brings together major masterpieces by the two giants of modern art as, between them, Matisse and Picasso originated many of the most significant developments of 20th-Century painting and sculpture.
Through a series of over 30 groupings of paintings and sculpture, the exhibition
gives fans the opportunity to compare and contrast Matisse's expressive use
of colour and line alongside Picasso's stylistic virtuosity.
Enthusiasts can trace the artists' relationship from its beginnings in Paris
in 1906, when they first met regularly in the studio of the collectors Gertrude
and Leo Stein, to the period after Matisse's death in 1954, when Picasso paid
tribute to him in his work, both directly and indirectly. In spite of their
initial rivalry, the exhibition will reveal how each artist came to acknowledge
the other as his only true equal.
The exhibition is a collaboration between Tate, the Réunion des musées
nationaux/Musée Picasso with the Musée national d'art moderne/Centre
Georges Pompidou, Paris, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Matisse Picasso, Tate Modern, Bankside, SE1. Sun-Thurs 10.15am-6pm. Fri
and Sat 10.15am-10pm.
Admission £10. Until 18 August.
MORE ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Matisse and Picasso are the acknowledged twin giants of modern art. In spite
of their initial rivalry, over the years each came to acknowledge the other
as his only true equal, and in old age they became increasingly close personally,
and increasingly important to each other artistically.
The works shown at the exhibition have been carefully selected to be comparable
in both scale and quality. The artists’ relationship is traced from its
beginnings in Paris in 1906, when they first began to meet regularly in the
studio of Gertrude and Leo Stein.
After Matisse’s death in 1954 Picasso paid tribute to him in his work,
both directly and indirectly. Of his series of variations after Delacroix’s
Women of Algiers, painted in 1955, he said 'when Matisse died he left his
odalisques to me as a legacy'.
However, it is the period from 1906 to 1917, when the two artists' open rivalry
and intense innovation was at its peak, that forms the densest part of the
exhibition.
Among the revealing and exciting pairings are Picasso’s monumental Boy
Leading a Horse of 1906 and Matisse’s Le Luxe 1 of 1907 (Le Luxe I
(1907), oil on canvas, from Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges
Pompidou, Paris; Photo: CNAC-GP/MNAM, Paris © Succession H. Matisse is
pictured above).
There is also Matisse’s celebrated Blue Nude and Picasso’s relatively little known, aggressively primitivist Nude with Raised Arms, both of 1907; as well as a sequence of paintings of women. Other sections are devoted to still life and landscape, while a key section shows Matisse responding to synthetic Cubism in his Moroccans and Piano Lesson, both of 1916.
In 1917, Matisse moved from Paris to Nice, and the two artists grew apart as Picasso became increasingly involved with the Surrealists. Yet they continued to study each other’s work and during the 1930s their commitment to art based in reality, drew them together once again.
However, during the Second World War, Matisse was isolated in Nice, while
Picasso remained in difficult circumstances in occupied Paris. But they managed
to exchange works and increasingly drew support from one another.
After the war Picasso moved to the South of France and their relationship
entered its final and closest phase, reflected in the section featuring Matisse’s
Large Red Interior 1948 and Picasso’s The Studio at Cannes 1955.
The final section of the exhibition concentrates on the acrobatic swimmers,
dancers and nudes that both produced throughout their careers, and will reveal
the remarkable cross-over between Picasso’s late sculptures, which became
increasingly flat and pictorial, and Matisse’s great late cut-out paper
collages.
(Part of the above text is taken from the official Matisse and Picasso
website, which can be accessed by clicking on the link below).
USEFUL LINKS: Click here
for the Tate Modern website
Click here for
the Matisse Picasso website
RELATED STORIES: Elija-Liisa Ahtila at Tate Modern. Click here...