MeTube: Elderfield and D’Alessandro Describe "Matisse: Radical Invention"

The Critic Sees: Peter Schjeldahl of the New Yorker ponders Matisse's celebrated "Blue Nude," 1907, from the Baltimore Museum's Cone Collection

I felt about Matisse: Radical Invention (which opens to the public on Sunday at the Museum of Modern Art) much as I had felt a month ago about Picasso Looks at Degas (to Sept. 12 at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA).

Both high-concept and well received shows were exhaustively researched over the course of five years, involving the close collaboration of a pair of highly respected curator/scholars: John Elderfield and Stephanie D'Alessandro for Matisse; Richard Kendall and Elizabeth Cowling for Degas/Picasso.

But although I approached both with the highest expectations---given the distinguished organizers, the high masterpiece count and the superlative artists, I ultimately felt let down by each show's failure to deliver a satisfying take on its overriding premise.

With their breathtaking array of great works drawn from international sources, these exhibitions couldn't have failed to impress, even had they not attempted to map a corner of little explored territory in the artists' oeuvres.

In the case of Picasso/Degas (as curator Kendall acknowledged to me in conversation after the press preview), the impression left by the art on display was not that Degas' style or artistic goals had significantly influenced Picasso's, but that there were certain affinities of subject matter and parallels in the artists' lives and artistic practice. Both, for example, had serious academic credentials as draftsmen, but eventually felt impelled to create sculptures, for which they lacked formal training.

As the Clark's director, Michael Conforti, acknowledged to me when I expressed my quibbles, upon meeting him in the final gallery of the show: