Silent dialogue, visual eloquence

By John Hendry

If you think that Matisse and Picasso can offer few surprises, you're probably right, but they can still offer beauty, fire and audacity beyond anything that followed in the latter half of the 20th century.

Seen side-by-side, as they are at the current show at the Tate Modern, they show artistic restlessness expressed with unrestrained visual eloquence. In front of the works in this show, the invitation to compare between one man and the other quickly becomes the starting point for exploring the individual genius of each artist.

Picasso's paint sits on the canvas with self-confidence and certainty. Cautious gradations and bold outlines present themselves with equal assurance. Matisse's brushwork has a nervous energy by comparison; wrought-ironwork, table legs, flowers, goldfish bowls float like ephemeral spectres on the point of dissolving before your eyes.

Indeed, on technique, there was no competition between the two. Picasso was the virtuoso who could do anything, handling paint in canvas in dozens of different styles with equal brilliance, improvising with wood, paper and metal in breathtaking ways. By contrast, Matisse seemed determined to remove skilled brushwork from the equation, as if it might obscure a painting’s ability to express beauty or nature.

Sometimes this makes Matisse's work look inept. It's a conclusion you are invited to draw as soon as you step into room 1. Matisse's trio of strangely awkward primitives in Le Luxe I are at loose in an idyllic landscape picked out in fauve blobs. Picasso’s Boy leading a horse shimmers in a dreamy heat haze. Human and equine flesh are shaded and contoured, offsetting their strong black outlines.

More revealing, though, is to compare Matisse to Matisse. In room two, Nude with a White Scarf is a mis-hit. The reclining figure bisects the canvas diagonally, separating saturated radiant red in the top left from a cooler peachy colour in the bottom right. But the lines picking out the model herself, particularly the head and face, are unable to suggest beauty, eroticism, or any type of counterpoint.

In the same room, Blue Nude: Memory of Biskra, a famous painting from 1907, is far more effective. The crudeness of the lines and the inhuman blue shading suggest an aggressive feral eroticism, complemented by the multi-coloured explosion of giant palm fronds in the background. Manners and tenderness are not the subject here.

Picasso is more consistent of the two, mastering Cubism, collage, biomorphisms, two dimensions or three, Surrealism and sculpture. In the midst of all these sparring isms, he offers Still Life with Pitcher and Apples. Resting on the wall with a sense of deep calm, it is a conservative naturalistic image of restrained colour and texture that would grace any era.

Not that we should concentrate on the rivalry between the two men, which was a mere detail in a much more complex relationship. As the admirably direct Introduction to the exhibition points out, Matisse and Picasso carried out an artistic dialogue over the decades. Each recognised true genius in the other, finding thematic and aesthetic inspiration.

And that is the subject of the exhibition. It shows the two of them tackling primitivism, portraiture, still life, nudity, music, interiors, abstraction and sculpture. Their methods are almost always completely different, yet often informed by the work of the other.

Take the way they approach abstraction, for example. In Table with Guitar, a charcoal drawing with collage by Picasso, the fixed image of the guitar has been shattered like a mirror, leaving different pieces of the simplified image randomly scattered across the plane.

Matisse's View of Notre Dame (oil on canvas) shows the cityscape having dissolved into a scratchy blue haze, leaving behind only a few transparent blocks where the cathedral was and incisive black lines recalling the riverbank or the arch of a bridge.

Or take two huge canvasses devoted to music in room 5. Picasso's Three Musicians are dark-skinned and extrovertly dressed, boldly coloured and angular in form. The shadow of a large dog or wolf lurks in the background. Superficially bright thanks to the harlequin costume of the centre musician, the background is strikingly dark, symbolism suggesting that the music itself is a meaningless diversion from the enveloping gloom.

Matisse's Piano Lesson is similarly downbeat. Big colour fields of grey and green dominate the centre of the image. The anxious player and insubstantial listener are pushed right to the edges of the canvas. It looks like the lesson is a joyless exercise.

From first to last, the exhibition fulfils its brief to illustrate the dialogue between the two men. Stylistic and thematic points of contact between the two artists are displayed together to point out the individuality and the similarities that make the dialogue fascinating and the pictures themselves quite brilliant.

It's mostly a chronological journey from the self-portraits of 1906 through to the monumental Matisse paper cut-outs of the 1950s. Along the way it takes in a room of drawings, small and large-scale sculptures, and a steady parade of masterpieces: Picasso’s Three Women at the Fountain, Matisse’s Decorative Figure on an Oriental Background, Picasso’s Three Dancers, and Matisse’s Pink Nude are highlights among highlights.

After a period in which exhibitions have been misleadingly titled or based on tenuous assertions, this one comes with a simple title and a transparent brief. Given the chance to show 20th-century genius, the curators have opted not to stand in the way and gesticulate.

The result is that this show welcomes you with open arms to look at, consider and investigate the profound qualities and endless fresh variation that Matisse and Picasso brought to their work. The exhibition's catalogue is an excellent place to start.