Picasso Matisse Modernism and Confrontation

Picasso Matisse

Modernism and Confrontation according to Picasso and Matisse

The modernist artistic ambitions of the early 20th century were particularly driven by the impulse to deconstruct the traditional forms that had come to reflect a certain hierarchy of artistic values. Central among the figures who would engage a dramatic departure from the classical approach to visual expressions would be Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, though each would pursue this ambition in his own distinct mode. So is this demonstrated by Le Bonheur de Vivre (the Joy of Life) which the French painter Matisse completed in 1905 and by Les Demoiselles D'Avignon (the Young Ladies of Avignon) produced by the Spanish born Picasso in 1907.

It is remarkable that the works in question cast so distinct an impression from one another given that they have taken up a common subject. Indeed, in both, a collection of ladies is shown, with wild distortions constituting the female form in both. However, we are immediately delivered to drastically different interpretations of said females. Indeed, Matisse offers us a glimpse at a group of naked women sunning in the grass, frolicking by the water and sharing revelry. The paradisic scene is underscored by a soft and yielding take on the female form, with curvature and fluidity seeming almost to connect these subjects to the lush and brightly colored landscape.

Picasso's work features no landscape, instead starkly posing five women in rigid and differing forms. If the distinctions between individual subjects in the Matisse work strike us as warmly nuanced, those driving the Picasso work at jagged and grotesque, each taking a radically different stylistic form, all demonstrative of the variants in cubist perspective. Just as Matisse compliments the vibrancy of his subjects with bright and vital greens, reds and blues, so does Picasso emote a cold sterility through the imposition of metallic whites and blues.

Quite to the point, these works evoke dramatically different emotional responses from the viewer as well. We can appreciate the emotional sentiment of the Picasso work, which only superficial research reveals was inspired by a brothel in Barcelona. To an extent, Picasso offers us a dark perspective on either the subject or, as one might suggest based on the confrontational stance of the painting's subjects, the experience of visiting these women. Indeed, as these women look out from the canvas, presenting themselves with stoic expressionless faces, they invoke a sense for the viewer as being one in the brothel presented with a set of distinct but equally repugnant choices.