The Art of Rivalry

Posted on by

Pulitzer Prize winning art critic Sebastian Smee tells the fascinating story of four pairs of artists Manet and Degas, Picasso and Matisse, Pollock and de Kooning, Freud and Bacon whose fraught, competitive friendships spurred them to new creative heights.Rivalry is at the heart of some of the most famous and fruitful relationships in history The Art of Rivalry follows eight celebrated artists, each linked to a counterpart by friendship, admiration, envy, and ambition All eight are household names today But to achieve what they did, each needed the influence of a contemporary one who was equally ambitious but possessed sharply contrasting strengths and weaknesses.Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas were close associates whose personal bond frayed after Degas painted a portrait of Manet and his wife Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso swapped paintings, ideas, and influences as they jostled for the support of collectors like Leo and Gertrude Stein and vied for the leadership of a new avant garde Jackson Pollock s uninhibited style of action painting triggered a breakthrough in the work of his older rival, Willem de Kooning After Pollock s sudden death in a car crash, de Kooning assumed Pollock s mantle and became romantically involved with his late friend s mistress Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon met in the early 1950s, when Bacon was being hailed as Britain s most exciting new painter and Freud was working in relative obscurity Their intense but asymmetrical friendship came to a head when Freud painted a portrait of Bacon, which was later stolen.Each of these relationships culminated in an early flashpoint, a rupture in a budding intimacy that was both a betrayal and a trigger for great innovation Writing with the same exuberant wit and psychological insight that earned him a Pulitzer Prize for art criticism, Sebastian Smee explores here the way that coming into one s own as an artist finding one s voice almost always involves willfully breaking away from some intimate s expectations of who you are or ought to be.Praise for The Art of Rivalry Gripping Mr Smee s skills as a critic are evident throughout He is persuasive and vivid You leave this book both nourished and hungry for about the art, its creators and patrons, and the relationships that seed the ground for moments spent at the canvas The New York Times With novella like detail and incisiveness Sebastian Smee opens up the worlds of four pairs of renowned artists Each of his portraits is a biographical gem The Art of Rivalry is a pure, informative delight, written with canny authority The Boston Globe Bacon liked to say his portraiture aimed to capture the pulsations of a person Revealing these rare creators as the invaluable catalysts they also were, Smee conveys exactly that on page after page His brilliant group biography is one of a kind The Atlantic Perceptive Smee is onto something important His book may bring us as close as we ll ever get to understanding the connections between these bristly bonds and brilliance The Christian Science Monitor In this intriguing work of art history and psychology, The Boston Globe s art critic looks at the competitive friendships of Matisse and Picasso, Manet and Degas, Pollock and de Kooning, and Freud and Bacon All four relationships illuminate the creative process both its imaginative breakthroughs and its frustrating blocks Newsday Download The Art of Rivalry Author Sebastian Smee – kino-fada.fr If he looks a bit bored here you have to understand that douard Manet had no ear for music, no matter how lovely his wife Suzanne played And he had been sitting most of a winter for Degas to get this family setting on canvas Ah, but Degas was showingthan boredom You know what they say about unhappy families.The right side of the painting looks as though Madame Manet is hidden by a wall But that s no wall Degas painted Suzanne in full profile, and the piano, too But when h If he looks a bit bored here you have to understand that douard Manet had no ear for music, no matter how lovely his wife Suzanne played And he had been sitting most of a winter for Degas to get this family setting on canvas Ah, but Degas was showingthan boredom You know what they say about unhappy families.The right side of the painting looks as though Madame Manet is hidden by a wall But that s no wall Degas painted Suzanne in full profile, and the piano, too But when he visited Manet, shortly after completing the painting, h...Painters Without PicturesSo much of the pleasure in an art book comes from the combination of text, binding, and the art itself that it is difficult to review a cheaply produced advance proof viaVine of the words alone However, the publishers promise a beautiful package with two 8 page color photo inserts of art Author Samuel Smee refers to the illustrations by number, and it is possible to look most of them up online, but there are a few cases where it is difficult to be sure exac Painters Without PicturesSo much of the pleasure in an art book comes from the combination of text, binding, and the art itself that it is difficult to review a cheaply produced advance proof viaVine of the words alone However, the publishers promise a beautiful package with two 8 page color photo inserts of art Author Samuel Smee refers to the illustrations by number, and it is possible to look most of them up online, but there are a few cases where it is difficult to be sure exactly which version of a work he has chosen But even if one assumes that the final copy will be all that its publishers promi...This is art history as examined through the relationships of four pairs of contemporaries Manet and Degas, Picasso and Matisse, Pollock and de Kooning, and Freud and Bacon With deft descriptions of the works and the techniques, and a little bogged down in the soap opera ish relationship tangles, Smee explores how love, hate, envy, friendship and just close proximity challenged these artists to expand their work, grow as artists if not always as human beings and think in tandem with another p This is art history as examined through the relationships of four ...Vivid and exuberant writing about art brings great works to life with love and appreciation Pulitzer citationSmee takes readers deep into the beginnings of modern art in a way that not only enlightens, but also builds a stronger appreciation of the influences that created the environment that fostered its development KirkusThis is magnificent book on the relationships at the roots of artistic genius Smee offers a gripping tale of the fine line between friendship and competition, tracingVivid and exuberant writing about art brings great works to life with love and appreciation Pulitzer citationSmee takes readers deep into the beginnings of modern art in a way that not only enlightens, but also builds a stronger appreciation of the influences that created the environment that fostered its development KirkusThis is magnificent book on the relationships at the roots of artistic genius Smee offers a gripping tale of the fine line between friendship and competition, tracing how the ties that torment us most are often the ones that inspire us most Adam ...Great topic, disappointing handling This book can t seem to decide whether it s biography, psychology, or art history, and in the end is a rather bland mix of the three that doesn t add up to solid substance You get some general biographical sketches, first of one person, then the other Sometimes they interact, but there is little to demonstrate the in depth dynamics of the rivalry I do believe the rivalries existed, but I wanted a littlemeat on the bone.There s a lot of surmising He Great topic, disappointing handling This book can t seem to decide whether it s biography, psychology, or art history, and in the end is a rather bland mix of the three that do...I was going to summarize my stance on this book by simply stating that I thought it was butt However, I ve decided you might need further explanation and support for such a negative review So here goes My first issue with this book was discovered right at the onset the language used I understand that art and art criticism seemingly requires the application of grandiloquence, but this was ridiculous By the end of the first chapter I tired of 55 word sentences filled with sesquipedalian word I was going to summarize my stance on this book by simply stating that I thought it was butt However, I ve decided you might need further explanation and support for such a negative review So here goes My first issue with this book was discovered right at the onset the language used I understand that art and art criticism seemingly requires the application of grandiloquence, but this was ridiculous By the end of the first chapter I tired of 55 word sentences filled with sesquipedalian words that ultimately conveyed a load of reified nonsense The only time I was thankful for overly obscure jargon was when the author refers to Jackson Pollock as a stumblebum My second issue was the failed attempt to clarify the overly masculine focus Smee states ...If you ever imagined that great artists languish in their garrets all day in solitude, please read The Art of Rivalry It s hard to see how these eight artists had time to paint at all with all the carousing, drinking, affairs, drugs, and fighting Art critic Sebastian Smee sets out to show how competitive friendships among artists result in pushing artists to be evencreative This makes sense, and he points to four sets of friendships rivalries in which one or both artists were pushed by If you ever imagined that great artists languish in their garrets all day in solitude, please read The Art of Rivalry It s hard to see how these eight artists had time to paint at all with all the carousing, drinking, affairs, drugs, and fighting Art critic Sebastian Smee sets out to show how competitive friendships among artists result in pushing artists to be evencreative This makes sense, and he points to four sets of friendships rivalries in which one or both artists were pushed by competition, jealousy, rivalry to try new ways of painting The rivalries are quite cinematic and the behavior of many of the artists is scandalous, demented, and sometimes destructive It certainly m...Art history is certainly not one of my areas of expertise I know just enough about art and artists to be able to answer trivial pursuit questions with answers other than Picasso So reading this book from the vantage point of learning something new was a great experience Smee is a good writer his book was neither terribly academic and dry, nor a vapid pop biography If Smee s book was a meal, then it was rather well cooked meat and potatoes, rather than a tv dinner or fancy French But if h Art history is certainly not one of my areas of expertise I know just enough about art and artists to be able to answer trivial pursuit questions with answers other than Picasso So reading this book from the vantage point of learning something new was a great experience Smee is a good writer his book was neither terribly academic and dry, nor a vapid pop biography If Smee s book was a meal, then it was rather well cooked meat and potatoes, rather than a tv dinner or fancy French But if his intent was to prove something about the power of rivalry vis a vis art and artists, I m not so sure he succeeded Almost, the book is an exercise in writing towards a theme Smee wrote the art of rivalry into being, perhaps in a bit of an emperor s new clothes facade Each o...I like the subject matter and the stories of these 4 couples of artists friends and rivals were interesting Their lives were filled with uncertainty, self doubt, sexual tensions, betrayals, failure, and breakthroughs Yet, at times their stories also fe...Ingres told him Draw lines, young man, and stilllines, both from life and from memory, and you will become a good artist p 106

The Art of Rivalry
  • 12 March 2018
  • ebook
  • 416 pages
  • 0812994817
  • Sebastian Smee
  • The Art of Rivalry