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A Portrait of the Artists
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19746 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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3 / 1991 |
2,231 Words |
| Author
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Michael Marshall
Michael Marshall is executive editor of THE WORLD & I. |
MATISSE AND PICASSO
A Friendship in Art
Francoise Gilot
New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 1990
333 pp., $30.00
"In the end there is only Matisse." Picasso's words testify to his unique regard for Matisse, that of the master of form for the great colorist. These two giants of modern art had known each other since before the First World War, but in the period from the end of World War II until Matisse's death in 1954 their relationship took on a unique and positive quality. We are fortunate that Francoise Gilot, who lived with Picasso from 1946 to 1953 and bore two of his children, was there to witness their meetings and so give us this book, which will certainly become an important document for the history of twentieth-century art.
Both men spent much of their time in the south of France during this period, and they pursued their relationship through frequent visits by Picasso and Gilot to Matisse at one or another of his residences in Vence or Nice. The visits were not reciprocated, not out of any antipathy, but because of the poor health Matisse suffered after a critical illness took him to the brink of death in 1941. Perhaps this circumstance brought a focus to their relationship and protected it. Art brought them together, and its discussion was the core of their meetings--the book is aptly subtitled "A Friendship in Art"--while Matisse was not involved in Picasso's other social relations.
For Picasso was an extremely difficult friend. He expected transparency form those close to him but then used the knowledge he gained for manipulation or malicious gossip. He was possessive and jealous and suspected betrayal if friends were not open with him. Yet he could cruelly discard those whom he thought had nothing more to reveal. As a result, his friends often held him at arm's length--even Braque, with whom he had pioneered Cubism in the years before 1914, the two of them working so selflessly that they shared their discoveries daily and would not even sign their canvases. Those who stayed close to Picasso were often sycophants.
Picasso was no respecter of persons either. He attended the corrida, the bullfight, religiously, and it formed a central myth in his art and life. Conflict and challenge were for him the essence of most human relationships. Gilot observes that Picasso would reinterpret works by masters of the past--Cranach, Delacroix,
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