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A review by jdintr
In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse and the Birth of Modernist Art by Sue Roe
4.0
I picked up this book after a visit to Philadelphia's Barnes Foundation museum, which featured a lot of artworks by Picasso and Matisse. I have learned a lot about Picasso over the years, but Matisse always seemed an enigma to me, and I hoped this would get me into his works.
Let me focus first on what Sue Roe does very, very well in this book: the brings Montmartre to life--it's cafes, it's moulins, its studios. The reader walks the streets with Picasso, shimmies through narrow alleys with Georges Bracque, and experiences the nightlife at artist hangouts like the Lupin Agile.
One other strength of Roe's text is the way she features the women who were there at the birth of Modernism. I had never heard of Marie Laurencin before (see painting below of Picasso, Laurencin, the poet, Apollonaire, and Picasso's lover, Fernande Olivier).
Now I'm a big fan of hers. Other important female figures are Gertrude Stein, the American who championed Picasso and was an early collector, Alice Tokal, partner and muse of Stein, and the tempestuous Fernande, a model whom Picasso painted over 60 times and with whom he lived through the first ten years of his time in Paris.
Reading the book was a challenge. Colored plates illustrate ten of the key works that Roe mentions, but there are far many more that aren't included. I read with the book in one hand and a tablet in the other to look up some of these mentioned pictures for myself. I especially wish that several of the paintings that Matisse completed in Collioure had been available. Still, this is the challenge with most nonfiction books about art and culture.
I had also hoped to learn more about the cultural ideas behind Cubism, Fauvism and modernism. Roe stays with the artistic developments. Near the end of the book, the Wright Brothers' invention of flight and the Ballets Russe appear as key influences, but by this time Picasso was on his way to the Big Time. I found few non-technical influences mentioned for the key years when Matisse and Picasso were establishing themselves outside the yearly Salon d'Autonmne.
For those interested in a key era of art, this is a great read. I learned a lot.
Let me focus first on what Sue Roe does very, very well in this book: the brings Montmartre to life--it's cafes, it's moulins, its studios. The reader walks the streets with Picasso, shimmies through narrow alleys with Georges Bracque, and experiences the nightlife at artist hangouts like the Lupin Agile.
One other strength of Roe's text is the way she features the women who were there at the birth of Modernism. I had never heard of Marie Laurencin before (see painting below of Picasso, Laurencin, the poet, Apollonaire, and Picasso's lover, Fernande Olivier).
Now I'm a big fan of hers. Other important female figures are Gertrude Stein, the American who championed Picasso and was an early collector, Alice Tokal, partner and muse of Stein, and the tempestuous Fernande, a model whom Picasso painted over 60 times and with whom he lived through the first ten years of his time in Paris.
Reading the book was a challenge. Colored plates illustrate ten of the key works that Roe mentions, but there are far many more that aren't included. I read with the book in one hand and a tablet in the other to look up some of these mentioned pictures for myself. I especially wish that several of the paintings that Matisse completed in Collioure had been available. Still, this is the challenge with most nonfiction books about art and culture.
I had also hoped to learn more about the cultural ideas behind Cubism, Fauvism and modernism. Roe stays with the artistic developments. Near the end of the book, the Wright Brothers' invention of flight and the Ballets Russe appear as key influences, but by this time Picasso was on his way to the Big Time. I found few non-technical influences mentioned for the key years when Matisse and Picasso were establishing themselves outside the yearly Salon d'Autonmne.
For those interested in a key era of art, this is a great read. I learned a lot.