The Art of Rivalry by Sebastian Smee
Smee’s 2016 book, The Art of Rivalry, examines the relationship between four sets of modern artists. Progressing from Impressionist’s Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas, to Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, to Jackson Pollock and Wilhelm De Kooning, and then, finally, to Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud.
This is not, by most parameters, a work of art criticism. There is little formal analysis of the featured artists work or much in the way art theory. And, in spite of the sequential timeline, there is no linear connection made from one couple to the next.
Nor do the selected pairings represent particularly divergent and conflicting aesthetics. Something that one would get, say, from coupling Ingres and Delacroix, delineating the charged divide between Classicism and Romantism. Of course, you could hardly construe a friendship of any kind between those two.
It is interesting, in the light of the above, that the two artists featured in this book, who’s respective practises differ the most, Picasso and Matisse, are, out of the four pairings, the ones whose relationship didn’t encompass a personal friendship.
What you do get in this engrossing book, is a look at eight very famous artists lives from a novel angle. By focusing on how these artists related to each other in the context of their particular place and time, new insights into their characters are gained. Given how very well-known these people were and, in some cases exhaustively written about, this is no mean feat.
One might make note that the author seemed to only find male artists to fit his brief. History can certainly provide many examples of friendships and rivalries between female artists and their male and female contemporaries. For instance, instead of focusing on his friendship with Pollack, examine instead De Kooning interaction with Grace Hartigan; or Elaine De Kooning’s relationship with Lee Krasner.
Perhaps in a future volume?
Published by Profile Books in the UK at £10.99 and in the USA by Random House at $20.00