{"id":92455,"date":"2018-03-30T12:24:36","date_gmt":"2018-03-30T10:24:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/?p=92455"},"modified":"2018-03-30T14:49:28","modified_gmt":"2018-03-30T12:49:28","slug":"the-art-of-rivalry-sebastian-smee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/2018\/03\/30\/the-art-of-rivalry-sebastian-smee\/","title":{"rendered":"A must read art book: The Art of Rivalry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t<style type=\"text\/css\">\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 {\n\t\t\t\tmargin: auto;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 .gallery-item {\n\t\t\t\tfloat: left;\n\t\t\t\tmargin-top: 10px;\n\t\t\t\ttext-align: center;\n\t\t\t\twidth: 33%;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 img {\n\t\t\t\tborder: 2px solid #cfcfcf;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 .gallery-caption {\n\t\t\t\tmargin-left: 0;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t\/* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes\/media.php *\/\n\t\t<\/style>\n\t\t<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-92455 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-thumbnail'><dl class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<dt class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/2018\/03\/30\/the-art-of-rivalry-sebastian-smee\/img_4662\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"112\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/CFA-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/IMG_4662-359x480.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" aria-describedby=\"gallery-1-92463\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt>\n\t\t\t\t<dd class='wp-caption-text gallery-caption' id='gallery-1-92463'>\n\t\t\t\tSebastian Smee, The Art of the Rivalry, 2016.\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl><dl class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<dt class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/2018\/03\/30\/the-art-of-rivalry-sebastian-smee\/image-20160621-16057-1cl9crg\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"136\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/CFA-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/image-20160621-16057-1cl9crg-480x436.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" aria-describedby=\"gallery-1-92464\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt>\n\t\t\t\t<dd class='wp-caption-text gallery-caption' id='gallery-1-92464'>\n\t\t\t\tEdgar Degas, \u00c9douard Manet and Mme. Manet (1868-69), oil on canvas, Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, Japan.\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl>\n\t\t\t<br style='clear: both' \/>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p>The subjects addressed in Pulitzer Prize winning author Sebastian Smee\u2019s The Art of Rivalry (2016) have all, single-headed, re-signified the general perception of art during their lifetimes. Thus it\u2019s a tale of giants. What made them so grand, Smee argues \u2013 besides enormous talent and great obstinacy \u2013 was a sense of rivalry among two men \u2013 yes, they are all men, as the author shamefully acknowledges in the introduction \u2013 as a driving force pushing their art further. We\u2019re talking about the love\/ hate relationships between Lucien Freud and Francis Bacon, Edgar Degas and \u00c9douard Manet, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse and finally Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock.<\/p>\n<p>The motives that turned these friendships sour are myriad and at times unclear; in each case, there\u2019s probably more to the bowl then the author, or readers, will ever know. They pass through different philosophical views or modus operandi \u2013 for instance, the long and painstaking process of Freud to complete a painting as opposed to Bacon\u2019s smoothness \u2013 personal reasons and at times competitiveness at its raw. As a pattern, there\u2019s an age difference between each two artists in question, or at least the feeling that a new kid on the block is coming to threaten someone\u2019s reign \u2013 either from the new kids or the old kings. The fact is that, in spite of Smee\u2019s efforts to draw parallels, at times forcefully so, between his case studies, each relationship had it\u2019s own, complex nature \u2013 as of all relationships.<\/p>\n<p>The book starts with the most personal relationship among the eight characters, between Bacon and Freud, to which the author even hints towards a romantic note on top of a mutual admiration \u2013 noteworthy, Smee has written extensively about Freud in the past. Even if Bacon was some good thirteen years older, both men were extremely handsome and gifted by the time they met in 1945. Both quite eccentric too. Yet there was a crucial difference: whereas Bacon was essentially a charmer, Freud was something of a social weirdo. The narrative goes on to assess the relationship between Manet \u2013 also a social charmer \u2013 and Degas, who besides any elected affinities shared the burden of coming from wealthy families in a 19th Century Paris where money struggle among intellectuals was, already then, the most common trope. In fact, it was Smee\u2019s visit to Japan to see the <a href=\"http:\/\/kmma.jp\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">portrait Monsieur and Madame \u00c9douard Manet<\/a>, painted by Degas in 1868\u201369 and depicting Manet lying casually on the couch as his wife plays the piano, that triggered the argument for the book. Degas had given it to Manet as a gift; upon a casual visit to the Manet\u2019s studio, Degas found the work missing a whole slice \u2013 that of the face of Madame Manet. Was Manet making an aesthetic point, around the notion of truth that fundamentally differed his approach to art from Degas\u2019? Or was he simply offended about the unflattering way in which his wife had been depicted in the canvas?<\/p>\n<p>Still in Paris, a few years later, the book continues to address the relationship between Matisse and Picasso \u2013 the Spaniard newcomer whose ambition to succeed was blatant from the very beginning. The rivalry here seems to be something endured rather by him and his entourage than by Matisse. Smee puts it crudely, \u2018it was a fight that Matisse, for a surprisingly long time, doesn\u2019t seem to have quite registered he was even in\u2019. Then Pollock and de Kooning, whose successes can hardly be dissociated from the trope of America itself \u2013 the Wyoming-born, poorly educated bloke and the Dutch immigrant who arrived at a new continent with virtually nothing. Both made it big in New York. There\u2019s something different, broadly speaking, about the US and how an open eagerness to succeed professionally is more acceptable there than in other parts of the world.<\/p>\n<p>Smee\u2019s mastery of the English language and powerful story-telling skills gives way to a richly entertaining narrative, accessible even to readers without a prior art-historical knowledge. The book is full of delicious gossips, such as the occasion in which Lucian Freud declined to attend a wedding, \u2018finding himself in the unusual position of having been sexually involved not only with the bride but also the groom and the groom\u2019s mother\u2019. Or one evening when, upon leaving a dinner party, Picasso and his supporters, \u2018poor but unafraid to make sacrifices in the interest of pleasure\u2019, went to buy toy arrows tipped with suction pads to shoot at a painting of Marguerite Matisse (Henri\u2019s daughter) that Picasso had gained as a present from her father. With roughly ninety pages per segment, each chapter addresses breaking-point moments in these artists\u2019 careers, with all their insecurities, failures and struggles to find an autonomous style. In doing so, the book further includes passages with some of the 19th and 20th Centuries finest players in the arts \u2013 Charles Baudelaire, Leo and Gertrude Stein, Peggy Guggenheim and Clement Greenberg, among several others. Friends or fiends, it was certainly an honour that each of these artists could benefit, out of rivalry or love, with peers as gifted in talent as themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What did the friendships between art giants such as Lucien Freud and Francis Bacon or Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock have in common? They were all based on competition, which according to Sebastian Smee is the (male) engine of the art evolution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92463,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1796],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mapping-the-artscape"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}