Matisse and Picasso by Jack Flam

Author:Jack Flam [JACK FLAM]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2011-12-27T16:00:00+00:00

AS PICASSO BEGAN TO REENGAGE with Matisse, Matisse was beginning to shift gears in his own painting. Early in 1926 he finished Decorative Figure on an Ornamental Background (Fig 7.8), which he showed that May at the Salon des Tuileries. This picture was widely perceived as representing a significant development in Matisse’s work, and it attracted a good deal of attention; even if Picasso did not attend the exhibition, he could scarcely have missed the noise the painting generated. The figure was strikingly geometric and sculptural, and the intensely decorated background and use of color were more abstract than anything Matisse had recently done. Some critics were scandalized by the painting’s lack of charm; others rallied to the new rigor—and energy—that it seemed to suggest. “On seeing this painting,” Tériade wrote, “you no longer fear old age because you see that the spirit can remain eternally young.” What a contrast this was with Breton’s recent description of Matisse as a “disheartened and disheartening” old lion who had been tamed and made to eat from the hands of the bourgeoisie. Later that year, as if to reaffirm his pedigree as a lion, Matisse showed two of his largest, most austere—and most Cubist-related—prewar canvases at Paul Guillaume’s gallery. The exhibition of The Piano Lesson and of Bathers by a River (Fig 6.9), along with only one other painting, created a small sensation, especially among artists who had more or less dismissed Matisse. After having been distanced from the discourse of cutting-edge art for the past several years, Matisse was returning to the arena.

FIGURE 7.8 Matisse, Decorative Figure on an Ornamental Background, 1925–1926. 130 x 98 cm.

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