Picasso and Matisse

Art comes in many shapes, forms, textures, colors, and extraordinary ideas. Over time artists have inspired one another and formed newer understanding as well as expanded on each other’s projects.  Two great artists, Picasso and Matisse, are an example of this ambition to enhance what the other had begun. The two paintings, Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and Henri Matisse’s Dance I, each depict five naked ladies on huge canvases. The two artist use different methods and techniques to show their piece of work yet have some similarities as well being that they were both done in France within two years of each other. 

Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is oil on canvas that was done in 1907 and stands 8 feet by 7 feet and 8 inches high. The painting is of five naked ladies surrounded by curtains and drapery.  Two of the woman have African masks as faces and one in a standard Egyptian pose with the skin tone in face that of a stone sculpture. The ladies are suppose to be prostitutes and are posing for the customers, in many ways that is the viewer observing the painting. All of the ladies look calm and don’t look mortified in any way about what they are doing. They all appear to have a blank expression, no smile or frown. They are all unique in their way, distinct height, pose, even skin color that makes them differ from Matisse’s Dance I painting. 

Henri Matisse’s Dance I paintingis also oil on canvas that was done in 1909 and stands 8 feet 6 ½ inches by 12'feet 9 ½ inches which is almost double the length of Picasso’s. In the painting are five all nude woman dancing in a circle with no drapery surrounding them. Only two of the top ladies have faces and expressions because they are facing us while the other three are facing them. Four of the ladies are almost the same height while the one on the right is small and barely depicted. They are all of the same color and even have the same roundness in bosoms unlike Picasso’s woman which have various shapes and sizes in chests. While Picasso’s naked women are posing for the clients, Matisse’s women are dancing, being free and are in their own state of spiritual bliss. 

In Picasso’s painting, each of the women are distinct and differ very much from one another. Aside from varying in colors, faces, poses, they also are outlined differently at several places with different colors. On the left side, the woman that is in contrapposto has a blue outline around her right leg. The woman next to her has a white outline under her breasts, right armpit, left leg and a white line across under her stomach. The third woman had a small brown outline going from her right arm down and around her breasts. The woman with the green African mask as her face has a sharp c-like black outline going down her back. The last woman has a black outline on both of her arms and a blue outlines around her left leg, around her breast and outlining her right side of the stomach. Picasso used different outlines to indicate the unique features of each of the women and gives them no union as Matisse does.

            Unlike Piccaso’s women, Matisse’s women are all the same having identical black color outline and same color hair. Matisse used only four colors; black, blue, green and light shade of pink for the skin tone unlike the Les Demoiselles d’Avignon painting which includes brown, blue, green, different shade of pink, white, gray, even yellow. Henri Matisse’s Dance I canvas is not very detailed as seen in the hands of the woman; they are barely drawn and loosely shown. Picasso clearly depicted some of the hands and we can see the difference between a clutched hand, loose fingers and a hand holding on to the drapery as the second figure from the left is doing. In Dance I (sketch) paining, on some of the figures the black outline was wet and oozed over the painting as seen from the figures on the right and left.  This shows how fast the artist was working or did not care about the runny lines of black ink because this was his ‘sketch’ painting and was not the finished product.