Matisse, Picasso, and Intertwined Psyches

Nasturtiums with 'Dance' II Matisse, 1912

The Three Dancers Picasso, 1912

Matisse and Picasso were engaged in a 50 year artistic dialogue, at times in conflict and competition, at others in harmonic synchronous resonance. Their influence on one another was truly bidirectional and has been compared to a multidimensional game of chess with each move rearranging the game challenging the partner to reflect and reconsider his own creative choice. The stunning show of their work side by side was shown in London (2002) sponsored by the Tate; in Paris (2002) sponsored by the Musee Picasso and the Centre Pompidou/Musee National d'Art (2002); and in New York sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art (2003). This carefully curated exhibition shone light on the amplifying effect of their interaction and one is reminded of Tronick's notions of "dyadic expansion of consciousness." They each take in the other, interpret or, as Bloom would have it, in the Anxiety of Influence (1973,1997) misinterpret the other leading to an original vision or voice, thus becoming even more himself in the work. It would be interesting to plot a graph of their artistic moments of meeting in which mutual influence is evident and moments of disengagement when they, in a sense, both look away from one another. The oscillations of this graph would need to be seen against a temporal, cultural background of the larger 20^th century milieu from which their work emerged. Always at the creative edge of organization and chaos their visions and ideas changed forever the way that we look at art. Says Bois (2001, p.16), "their dialogue is more than a private one; it is a matrix for most issues pertaining to the history of figurative art." It is through the process of their interactive artistic and personal dialogue that modern art was born.
 
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Birds of Prophecy

Studies of Wings Nicolas Vleughels, 1717

In this presentation I want to follow the image of the bird in its flight, reflecting our ability to imagine, our ability to transcend, as it moves so easily between heaven and earth: the bird as the soul or anima, acting as mediator between conscious and unconscious; or the bird as the breath of the world, the world soul hidden in matter. It is also the bird that brings us inspiration, prophecy and truth; the bird that moves between the worlds as in poetry and images. Sometimes it comes as a voice from a spirit bird whispering into the ear of St. Gregory. In a painting by William Blake, called "Hope," an angel touches the mouth of a kneeling writer, perhaps Blake himself. Blake explains: "I have written this poem from immediate Dictation." Or in the words of the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz: "I am no more than a secretary of the invisible things / that are dictated to me and a few others" (from the poem "Secretaries"). And then there is the Spanish poet, Federico Garcia Lorca, who knew that inspiration also rises from below – from earth itself – from the darkness of the body – as duende or the color of black sound that Lorca would invoke before speaking or writing. He once described how duende, a winged trickster figure, perched on his shoulder as he gave his lectures. He knew that only when duende is present was he moved to the heights of poetic inspiration. He also knew that duende is related to death or to demons – or to Socrates' daimon, our true inner voice. "The daimon becomes the figure of the petition," writes the poet Edward Hirsch in a book on inspiration, called "the demon and the angel." Whether inspiration or temptation – the message from the other world arrives to us on wings.
 
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