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| Rivals or Friends? |
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KERA: And the dialogue continued for the next twenty-five years… Rick Brettell: Yve-Alain’s exhibition celebrates the last third of their careers. There’s a feeling that they’ve transcended mere fashion. All these younger artists are barking up trees that they no longer have to bark up. The exhibition deals with the mature phase in the history of two artists whom we are taught to think of as opposites. And it makes us realize that though they are in many ways opposites, one feeds the other. It’s almost like a love affair in a way, because nobody else could inspire them as much as they could inspire each other. Yve-Alain Bois: I think it’s rather interesting to think of their relationship as a sibling rivalry. I see Matisse and Picasso that way a lot. Rick Brettell: They each wanted to dominate the other. And nobody wanted to win. I don't see Matisse and Picasso as friends. I see them as being archetypal rivals, sort of friendly rivals. Yve-Alain Bois: Chess is a very interesting metaphor for explaining the relationship between two artists like Matisse and Picasso. They needed the challenge of an adversary in order to become better themselves. They knew it. KERA: And then Matisse dies, and Picasso goes through a period of mourning, painting the series of interiors at his studio, La Californie, in memory of Matisse. What do you see in those paintings? Rick Brettell: The notion of the old guy paying homage to the older guy now gone…I was just stunned. The black, I mean that spaceless, extraordinary black. One remembers Matisse’s blacks from 1910 and 1911, and Picasso remembered even that. And it’s interesting that Picasso actually knew enough about grief, about the way in which any kind of expressive form plays a role in grief, to let himself grieve artistically, and to do it in a rather concerted way. And therefore to be able to have an end, so that he could go on.
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