Henri Matisse: Le Bonheur De Vivre Or The Joy Of Life

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“Henri Matisse is widely regarded as the greatest colorist of the twentieth century and as a rival of Pablo Picasso in the importance of his innovations. He emerged as a post-Impressionist, and first achieved prominence as the leader of French movement Fauvism.” (Art Story, March 17, 2018.). While “Picasso was considered radical in his work, Picasso continues to garner reverence for his technical mastery, visionary, creativity and profound empathy. Together, these qualities have distinguished the “disquieting” spaniard with the “somebrepiercing” eyes as a revolutionary artist. Picasso devoted himself to an artistic production that he superstitiously believed would keep him alive, contributing significantly to and paralleling the entire …show more content…

It is idyllic scene of reclining nudes, embracing lovers and care free dancers. The colors are flat, the figures sketched in, some drawn as Cezannes’s bathers. Nothing like it had ever been painted, even by Matisse. Picasso understood this at once and look it as a challenge. Picasso became Picasso because he would not let Matisse outshine him. Soon after seeing Le Bonheur de Vivre, he set to work on his most ambitious and starting painting, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. He repainted it over and over, using primitive masks and postcards of African women for models, drawing on Cézanne and Gauguin as guides, summoning all his will to undo the past and invent the future. It began as a tableau with sailor surrounded by five prostitutes, all surprised by a student holding a skull entering stage right. It ended with just the women, their stares directed straight out at the viewer. As Picasso worked, he simplified, reducing the faces to crude masks, the bodies to fragmented fetish’s, imbuing the canvas with a power both primitive and unimaginable new. None of this came easily or quickly. As Picasso was struggling with his Demoiselles, he was jolted again by Matisse, who exhibited his shocking Blue Nude: memory of Biskra Matisse had also used a postcard (of a nude figure) as the model, and was looking hard at Cézanne and Gauguin. With this new painting Matisse was stepping on Picasso’s toes before Picasso could even put his foot down.” (Matisse and Picasso, March 17,

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