KERA: And later on, the rivalry was intensified by people in Picasso’s circle who began to ridicule Matisse openly.

Rick Brettell: Picasso never, ever had a conventional bourgeois life. I mean, though he was married, and though he had children several times, he lived outside the strictures of conventional morality. And therefore he could construct his own social life, because you know Madame Picasso was not such an important deal, and the kids were not such an important deal. What was important to him were the informal friendships of dealers, collectors, critics, friends, and hangers on.

With Matisse, on the other hand, even though in the 20’s the kids are getting older, and perhaps he’s a little bored with Madame Matisse, his sense of being a pater familia and of being bourgeois, of being correct, is a very important part of Matisse’s life. And for that reason alone, almost for the social reasons, it was very easy for the young, ne’er-do-wells, sexually libertine, socially libertine, foreign artists in Paris to make fun of, you know, the old guy who’s down in Nice painting odalisques because he can’t get it up with his wife anymore. I mean it’s fairly easy to make fun of Matisse during this period of time.

KERA: And then, near the end of 1920’s, Matisse finds himself unable to paint.

Rick Brettell: Matisse, like all artists, has moments of confidence and then moments of doubt. And that has a lot to do with modernism. Mearleau-Ponty wrote this great essay called “Cezanne's Doubt” that’s about how self-doubt is actually one of the principal ingredients of modernism, because if you feel comfortable with what you’re doing, then you do it in a way which is rote and formulaic. And if you don’t feel comfortable with what you're doing, if you’re your own worst critic, and if you chose to pit yourself against other artists who you perceive as being stronger, then your chance of actually doing something original and important is much better.

No matter who you are, if you’re forced by your age, and by the circumstances of your fame, to confront yourself entirely, then there’s the possibility of clutching, particularly when you’ve clutched before. And there was a monumental clutch, and a fear of failure, and of not knowing where you were going. And that's the most interesting time in Matisse’s career, I think.

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