Matisse and Picasso achieved extraordinary prominence during their lifetimes. They have become cultural icons, standing not only for different kinds of art but also for different ways of living. Matisse, known for his restraint and intense sense of privacy, for his decorum and discretion, created an art that transcended daily life and conveyed a sensuality that inhabited an abstract and ethereal realm of being. In contrast, Picasso became the exemplar of intense emotionality, of theatricality, of art as a kind of autobiographical confession that was often charged with violence and explosive eroticism. In "Matisse and Picasso," Jack Flam explores the compelling, competitive, parallel lives of these two artists and their very different attitudes toward the idea of artistic greatness, toward the women they loved, and ultimately toward their confrontations with death.

About the Author

Jack Flam is Distinguished Professor of Art and Art History at the City University of New York. His articles and reviews on African art and nineteenth- and twentieth-century European and American art have appeared in Art Bulletin, Artforum, Art in America, Art Journal, ArtNews, African Arts, and The New York Review of Books. The author of numerous books he lectures internationally and has been the recipient of a Guggenheim and a Senior Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Prizes

Reviews

Timed to coincide roughly with the opening of the blockbuster Matisse-Picasso exhibition's third and final stop, at New York's MoMA QNS (February-May), this volume examines the enmity and amity between the 20th century's two greatest painters, mostly as evidenced by their art. Despite the subtitle, Flam, who brilliantly edited Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, is much less interested in the endlessly chronicled lives of his subjects than in the work; sentences like "When Matisse returned from Morocco that spring, he was full of turbulent emotions, and he created some of his most memorable and original works" simply serve as transitions to the next phase of work-on which Flam is terrific. In one passage, he finds the word "NON" ("a symmetrical word that asserts its negation in both directions") painted into the window grillwork between the husband-and-wife of Matisse's 1912 Conversation-a word that had been showing up in Picasso's work for the previous year. Flam locates similarly productive appropriations and reappropriations between the two painters over the years, so that anyone standing in line for the exhibition in Queens will profit from at least flipping through this direct, jargon-free study. (Feb.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

"Brilliantly details the strange union of this very odd couple."

A critic and Distinguished Professor of Art and Art History at CUNY, Flam has made an intriguing addition to Matisse and Picasso scholarship with this biography of their relationship. As is well known, the two artists engaged in a more or less lifelong professional and social "game of chess." Flam argues that their personalities are inseparable from their artistic output, and he offers the salon support of Gertrude and Leo Stein as the fulcrum for the masters' competition. In this highly readable book, the author examines anecdotes and historical quotes that others quickly brush over or miss entirely. Thus, the book will complement flashier writings by artists, curators, and essayists in the Museum of Modern Art's illustrated Matisse Picasso. Flam nicely mixes evidence and speculation and doesn't shy away from analysis of individual canvases, making this an in-depth and perceptive look at the artists' friends, women, paintings, gossip, and mutual obsession. Recommended for all art collections.-Douglas McClemont, New York Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.