CLASH OF THE TITANS

"Judith Beheading Holofernes," by Caravaggio, 1599

We usually look at art in nearly church-like settings--hushed, respectful museums and galleries--but some of the greatest artists were far from polite. In fact, some were outright thugs--Caravaggio springs to mind, painting brilliantly between drunken brawls and swordfights, finally fleeing Rome to escape murder charges with a price on his head. It would be hard to imagine the brooding master thriving in our current art scene, chatting up suburbanites over cheese platters on First Thursday. You just know someone would get skewered.


"Caravaggio," from Simon Schama's BBC series, Power of Art

Other artists had their battles on canvas. They didn't paint to pacify us with beauty, but to strong-arm us into seeing the world in a new way. In the last century, Pablo Picasso punched us in the nose and rearranged our faces. Henri Matisse did the same thing, albeit more gently, lyrically, with a few brushstrokes or paper cut-outs.

"Bull Skull, Fruit, and Pitcher," by Pablo Picasso, 1939

To some, "The Fight of the Century" will always be Ali vs. Frazier at the Garden in 1971, and to others the Kennedy/Nixon presidential debate, or maybe Hemingway walloping F. Scott Fitzgerald outside Les Deux Magots. Some say it was a battle of the bands, when the Stones followed James Brown on the TAMI Show, or when the Clash opened for the Who in 1980. My vote would be the clash between the two best artists of the twentieth century, Picasso and Matisse, who shook hands and came out painting.


Picasso and Matisse were the heavyweights, the undisputed masters of modern art. In 2003, their lifelong dialog was celebrated at the Museum of Modern Art. In this clip, Charlie Rose discusses the "Matisse Picasso" show with the MoMa curators, Kirk Varnedoe and John Elderfield.

"Icarus," by Henri Matisse, 1947

SCUOLA METAFISICA

His mother was Genovese and his father was Sicilian, but Giorgio de Chirico was actually born in Volos, Greece, in 1888. He studied in Athens and Florence, and returned to Florence to paint the first of his "Metaphysical Town Square" series, The Enigma of an Autumn Afternoon, after a vision he had in the Piazza Santa Croce.

De Chirico moved to Paris in 1911, and showed his work at the Salon des Independants in 1913, where it caught the eye (and approval) of Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire. Here he sold his first painting. A pre-Surrealist who influenced a great many artists, the Italian painter founded the Scuola Metafisica art movement.

Piazza Santa Croce, Florence, was a revelation to de Chirico. In the Basilica di Santa Croce, the church on the piazza, there are frescoes by Giotto, and the tombs of illustrious dead Italians, including Michelangelo, Galileo, Rossini, and Machiavelli. Dante stands guard out front.

The Enigma of an Autumn Afternoon, by Giorgio di Chirico, 1910

LE MYSTERE PICASSO

The third volume of John Richardson's A Life of Picasso has just been published. I just read a review in the New York Review of Books, and now I wish I had the books -- and a time machine! Here is an excerpt from the review by Andrew Butterfield.

The book starts with Picasso's trip to Italy in the spring of 1917 in the company of Jean Cocteau, Sergei Diaghilev, and Léonide Massine, three of his four collaborators on the ballet Parade that they were then planning. Erik Satie, the composer of Parade, stayed home in Paris, but Igor Stravinsky joined the group in Rome and swiftly became close friends with Picasso. Stravinsky and Picasso studied the Sistine Chapel and the museums of Rome, and with Massine and Cocteau explored the ruins of Pompei and Herculaneum. In Rome they went to the puppet theater, and in Naples they attended performances of commedia dell'arte, experiences that not only helped shape Parade but later directly inspired the ballet Pulcinella which Stravinsky, Massine, and Picasso created in 1920.

For the entire review
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20892



A clip from the documentary "Le Mystère Picasso", produced and directed by H. G. Clouzot. France 1956.

THIS MONKEY'S GONE TO HEAVEN

"Congo" the chimpanzee recently sold three paintings at a London auction house for more than $25,000. Howard Hong, an American collector, bought the paintings at Bonhams' auction house. The chimp art, painted when the animal was three, was included in a 1957 chimp art exhibition curated by famous zoologist Desmond Morris. Morris, author of The Naked Ape, had attempted to understand "chimpanzees' ability to create order and symmetry as well as to explore, at a more primeval level, the impetus behind our own desires for artistic creativity," auction house Bonhams said. The directory of modern and contemporary art at Bonhams added "We had no idea what these things were worth. We just put them in for our own amusement."


Pablo Picasso, noted human artist, is said to have had a painting by "Congo" hanging in his studio. The painting had been a gift.

To hear "This Monkey's Gone to Heaven," by the Pixies, please click button.

ART IS A WEAPON

"No, painting is not made to decorate apartments, it's an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy."
Picasso, Les Lettres Francaises, March 24, 1945