January 6, 2003
Timed to coincide roughly with the opening of the blockbuster Matisse-Picasso
exhibition's third and final stop, at New York's MoMA QNS (February–May), this volume examines the enmity and amity between the 20th century's two greatest painters, mostly as evidenced by their art. Despite the subtitle, Flam, who brilliantly edited Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, is much less interested in the endlessly chronicled lives of his subjects than in the work; sentences like "When Matisse returned from Morocco that spring, he was full of turbulent emotions, and he created some of his most memorable and original works" simply serve as transitions to the next phase of work—on which Flam is terrific. In one passage, he finds the word "NON" ("a symmetrical word that asserts its negation in both directions") painted into the window grillwork between the husband-and-wife of Matisse's 1912 Conversation—a word that had been showing up in Picasso's work for the previous year. Flam locates similarly productive appropriations and reappropriations between the two painters over the years, so that anyone standing in line for the exhibition in Queens will profit from at least flipping through this direct, jargon-free study.
February 15, 2003
A critic and Distinguished Professor of Art and Art History at CUNY, Flam has made an intriguing addition to Matisse and Picasso scholarship with this biography of their relationship. As is well known, the two artists engaged in a more or less lifelong professional and social "game of chess." Flam argues that their personalities are inseparable from their artistic output, and he offers the salon support of Gertrude and Leo Stein as the fulcrum for the masters' competition. In this highly readable book, the author examines anecdotes and historical quotes that others quickly brush over or miss entirely. Thus, the book will complement flashier writings by artists, curators, and essayists in the Museum of Modern Art's illustrated Matisse Picasso. Flam nicely mixes evidence and speculation and doesn't shy away from analysis of individual canvases, making this an in-depth and perceptive look at the artists' friends, women, paintings, gossip, and mutual obsession. Recommended for all art collections.-Douglas McClemont, New York
Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.