“The personality of the artist asserts itself through the struggles it has to go through when pitted against other personalities. If the fight is fatal, it is a matter of destiny.”
-- Henri Matisse

KERA: It’s been said that Matisse and Picasso were “modern” artists, artists who worked in the modernist tradition as opposed to the classical or nineteenth century academic tradition.

Perhaps we should start by asking, “What does ‘modernism’ mean?”

Rick Brettell: Modernism is an urban, capitalist art movement that starts in France in the middle of the nineteenth century. Artists are finding ways to get outside the Academy, working with independent dealers, getting to know smart collectors, doing things on their own, and also working with others. Artists rent their own spaces, print their own catalogues, do deals with dealers, determine the context in which their works of art are presented to an urban public.

The notion, the real notion of modernism is that it’s non-hierarchical, non-master/student. You don’t learn to do things in a certain way and then go do them. You don’t suddenly make your great thing and then replicate it for the rest of your life… You learn to make art from others, from making it yourself, and interacting as an equal with others.

It’s a life-long process of struggle, of self-definition both between you and your canvases, or you and your plates, or you and your pieces of paper, but also between you and other strong people who you respect.

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