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We must talk to each other as much as we can. When one of us dies, there will be some things the other will never be able to talk of with anyone else. --Henri Matisse to Pablo Picasso KERA: Yve-Alain, some critics have written about Matisse and Picasso as though they represented opposite ends of the artistic spectrum. What’s wrong with that notion? Yve-Alain Bois: There’s nothing wrong with the idea that they are opposed, that they are like two big fish in a big pond that are going to go in various directions, opposite directions at times and all that. But it doesn’t allow for a lot of historical movement, for change. It casts them too much in bronze, when in fact their relationship is very fluid. The thing that is different about Matisse and Picasso is that they were very conscious of playing this role themselves, and they played it with a vengeance. KERA: What was behind Picasso’s early perceptions of Matisse? How did the rivalry start? Yve-Alain Bois: I think that Picasso felt that, you know, this guy was really powerful and he didn’t want to be left behind. Picasso was extraordinarily ambitious, and he had already achieved quite a lot of success. And he knew that Matisse was a big obstacle in the road that Picasso had chosen for himself. Picasso wanted to become the most powerful avant-garde painter in Paris at the time, and so this very clear element of rivalry occurs very early in their relationship.
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