Richardson shrugs at Bois, moves on

"The give-and-take between Picasso and Matisse has been the subject of so much discussion in recent years that there is little to add," John Richardson claims on page 309 of the third volume of his Picasso biography.

As I noted yesterday, throughout Vol. III Richardson insists that Picasso exists as a solitary figure, an artist apart from his contemporaries. For someone intending to write the definitive biography of one of the century's two major artists, I think that ignoring the dialogue between Matisse and Picasso is rather odd. (In the few instances when Richardson refers to Matisse it's usually to note something along the lines of "Matisse was in [Picasso's] sights," rather than to note that Picasso's art was impacted by Matisse.)

Today I'll look at one specific period of Picasso's production from which Richardson expels Matisse, and I'll try to show how I think it deprives us of a fuller picture of Picasso's life and work. The years 1931-32 were a key focus of Yve-Alain Bois' 1999 Kimbell show. Richardson mentions the exhibition, and shrugs: "Bois, whose sagacious catalog preface, slyly subtitled 'A Gentle Rivalry,' tends to see things from Matisse's viewpoint..." Having unleashed a kindness, Richardson then shrugs and turns away.

Since Richardson brought it up, let's take a look at the two paintings that Bois discusses in that very catalogue preface. The canvas at the top of this post is Picasso's Still Life: Bust, Bowl, and Palette (1932) from the Musee Picasso in Paris. The second image is Matisse's Still Life with a Plaster Bust (1916) from the Barnes.

In 1931 Galerie Georges Petit launched a Matisse retrospective. This still life was not in it, but it was featured in a full-page reproduction in Cahiers d'Art that was published on the occasion of the Petit show. Picasso would have seen the 'zine, ensuring that the Matisse painting was in his mind. (Bois also thinks that Picasso saw it in 1919. As Richardson notes repeatedly, Picasso was the sort who remembered these things.)

"Picasso would return more than once to study his rival's work," Richardson writes of Matisse's Georges Petit show. Then the biographer, who throughout Vol. III dwells on tiny details of the influence of Ingres, mannerism, etc. on Picasso, fails to focus on any specific examples of how Matisse's work impacted Picasso deeply during one of Picasso's greatest and most hyper-productive periods, the early months of 1932. This enables Richardson to further his argument that Picasso was The Greatest, that he achieved alone, and that his peers were merely ancillary figures who just happened to be there.

Except as Bois shows, that's not the way it went. "Could there be a closer pairing?" Bois asks about these two canvases. "In March 1932, Picasso attends to Matisse just as he attends on other occasions to Ingres and to Delacroix: he does so with a purpose... To say that Picasso was thinking of Matisse would be an understatement. But why does [Picasso] offer a response to Still Life with a Plaster Bust at this particular time? Did he have something to tell Matisse -- a score to settle, a corrective to offer?"

Yes. As Bois notes, Matisse's 1916 still life was one of a handful of responses to Picasso's cubism that Matisse finished that year, possibly the best still-life of the bunch. (Those canvases include the AIC's Bathers by a River and MoMA's The Moroccans. Picasso famously responded to Bathers with MoMA's Painter and Model.) Bois points out that the still life we're talking about here references a number of Picasso's cubist innovations and paintings, notably MoMA's 1915 Harlequin.

So no question: The 1931 Cahiers d'Art reproduction of Matisse's painting was a clear provocation, the kind of painting to which Picasso would certainly respond. (Throughout Richardson's three volumes he makes much of Picasso's Spanish origins and how Picasso embodied certain stereotypical Spanish traits such as machismo. Richardson oft notes that Picasso loved to respond to provocations. But here, presented an opportunity to revisit a favored storyline, Richardson passes.)

And Picasso did respond. In early 1932, as we can see above, Picasso revisits that 1916 painting and cubist-era Matisse. Naturally, Picasso tries to one-up his rival. It is an example that makes so clear the impact Matisse had on Picasso (and vice versa) that Bois opens his book with it. The 1931-32 shows provided Richardson with an obvious opportunity to make clear how much Matisse and Picasso meant to each other. But giving a fuller account of those years and that artistic dialogue would have damaged Richardson's Lone Artist theory, so he skips them.

Oh, one more thing: Bois writes that after quickly making his still life in early 1932, Picasso held it out of his Georges Petit show. Maybe even Picasso knew that his still life revealed too much.

Related: An unusually high number of Picassos from late 1931/early 1932 reference Matisse, including Repose, which riffs on Matisse's Odalisque with a Tambourine. Matisse's 1907 Baltimore Blue Nude and its related reclining nude sculpture were also on Picasso's mind in this period. He made a bronze Reclining Figure in late 1931 that references the Matisse sculpture, and the Musee Picasso's Reclining Nude (day) is a clear reference to the Baltimore canvas.