Murray’s Reviews > In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse and the Birth of Modernist Art > Status Update

Matisse and Picasso had their lean years. Not selling. Few shows. But they kept going.

Matisse’s art went from shades of gray to thousands of minute points of paint working together to create an image to - after a long hot summer at a fishing village by the sea - huge swaths of color that made his pictures explode.

Picasso went from his grim Blue Period to the warmth and humanity of art the color of roses.

I’m unable to put this book down. It reads like a novel. Romance, tragedy, heroism. These women and men are determined to be artists even if the sales and money are not there (think Van Gogh). Picasso is in his Blue Period (painting what the public saw as depressing works though I love The Old Guitarist) followed by his upbeat Rose Period (la grâce des femmes). Neither him nor Matisse can get shows or sell art.

Fascinating. I love reading about the lives of artists - whether they be musicians, painters, writers, dancers, theatrical 🎭 so long as the focus is on their art and the significant relationships in their lives (not gossipy). This book is alive with paint and and exploring new ways to create and bring the mundane (as some see it) to color and to life.

For Vlaminck, subjective expression was not so much an aesthetic as a personal compulsion, a private quest driven by a tremendous urge to re-create a new world seen through my own eyes, a world which was entirely pure. ‘I was poor, but I knew that life was something pure, and I realized that all I wanted to do was to find some new and profound way of identifying myself with the soil.'

🖼️ 🎨

I waited for this in the mail which is a vibe you cannot get from an ebook 🙌🏼

🔆(ebooks have different vibes)

Fun to find a book in an envelope at the door🚪📖 💕 ahhh the scent ! and the rich touch on the fingertips of paper 📄