Picasso Vs Matisse

The painters Matisse and Picasso both belonged to a breed of artist who, like Cezanne, hoped to redefine what the viewer might make of art in terms of space, form and perspective. They each battled with overcoming the illusion of space and refused to adhere to traditional use of color in depictions of nature and the human image.

Looking at the three paintings together, one is immediately struck by the staging offered by each painting, not only provided by the confines of the canvas but also by the objects bordering the paintings. To this stage, we see images of women as perceived by each of the painters almost on display, as if they were a living exhibition. This is probably what I view as the biggest inspiration that Cezanne offered the two vanguards.

Cezanne’s painting shows us a group of women who are by and large not involved with the viewer and are carrying on with their activities. The women in the Matisse and the Picasso appear to be posing for us – that we might look upon them and make of them what we may. Either way, our opinion does not really matter! Essentially, while Cezanne’s models might have been ordinary women out for a day of fun, Matisse chose to depict almost mythical nymphs
in a garden of paradise enjoying life as the painting’s name suggests and Picasso takes us to the familiar [to him] world of the prostitute, totally uninhibited by her profession and her body.

Matisse goes further to depict what has been called a mythical setting for his painting which is similar to that of Cezanne although we can easily imagine that Cezanne painted his image from observation and not from the imagination as Matisse clearly does.
Picasso’s painting also appears to be done from an observation rather than from his imagination, although, in his style of Cubism, he has constructed the women as he views them, with angular limbs and distorted faces – some say this was his fear of what the women could transmit to him in the form of disease, while others feel it was his general view of the danger of the female person. Matisse is much more forgiving and appreciative of the female form, depicting them as curvaceous nymphs in a mythical
paradise.

Matisse is therefore seen to have made his break via the use of color as a means of defining form while Picasso has used his methods of deconstruction to depict the female form from a perspective that forces the viewer to engage more and see the basic elements of woman as imagined by the artist.