Matisse. - Review - book review

John Russell: Matisse: Father and Son. New York: Harry N. Abrams Publishers, 1999. 416 pp., 48 color ills., 48 b/w. $39.95.

John O' Brian. Ruthless Hedonism: The American Reception of Matisse. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. 284 pp., 87 color and b/w ills. $45.

When I read last year that Pierre Matisse's archives had gone to the Morgan Library, I wondered who would be the lucky person who first got to open what sounded like an amazing treasure trove. According to Carol Vogel in an article published in the July 8, 1998 issue of the New York Tines, among the documents housed in "209 acid-free boxes are 2000 letters from artists Balthus, Chagall, Dubuffet, Giacometti, Mir[acute{o}] and Tanguy, many of them actual series of letters." There were also 821 letters between Henri and Pierre, but Vogel said "they were restricted until 2008, at the request of the family."

That a journalist--even the former chief art critic of the New York Times-should have had first crack at the archives came as something of a surprise, considering the number of qualified art historians in the field. Yet among the scholars whose names come to mind, none could claim the reciprocal and close personal relationship that former Now York Times critic, John Russell, and his wife, Rosamond Bernier, had nurtured with the Pierre Matisse family over many years. (The photographs prolifically included in the book include one of Bernier interviewing the dealer at his seaside home in St.-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. Another photograph, this one taken by Bernier, shows Pierre Matisse and his daughter, Jackie, at the Hermitage Museum looking at a Matisse painting.) And perhaps no other living friend of the family could have produced a book on the subject that would so effortlessly appeal to a general audience.

In allowing the critic to consult and quote from the exchange of letters between father and son, despite the stated 2008 restriction, the Matisse heirs demonstrated their complete trust in Russell's judgment and diplomacy. Matisse: Father and Son is a good read that touches lightly on but never excavates the controversial subjects it so deftly and cleverly raises.

Russell removes the magician's mask customarily worn by Matisse p[grave{e}]re. In the chapters that directly evoke the relationship of father and son, the critic reveals the artist to be a concerned father, and an eminently practical businessman. Matisse p[grave{e}re closely watched over his son's first steps in the New York art world, supplied works for his son to sell, and even loaned Pierre money when necessary-at 2 percent interest. He insisted on clear and transparent accounts. "But, as I have already told you, you have to tell us 'I have sold X drawings for X dollars apiece, and so many lithographs for X dollars apiece. The dealers took one third or 50%. The dollar is worth X francs at present. Therefore I have sold for a total of X francs.' If you do that, we shall know exactly what happened and as soon as possible. This must be done NOW AND ON ALL FUTURE OCCASIONS" (letter of April 20, 1925, cited p. 38). Russell refrains from commenting on the harsh tone of this admonition, and gracefully moves on t o another subject.

He has the same nonjudgmental attitude when he discusses the cause of the break between Pierre Matisse and one of his artists, Jean Dubuffet. Between 1947 and 1960, the Pierre Matisse Gallery held ten exhibitions of Dubuffet's work. In the 1950s, several Paris dealers clamored for his work, including Daniel Cordier, who decided to prepare a catalogue raisonn[acute{e}]. For months, Pierre Matisse apparently balked at supplying the essential photographs and a detailed list of the paintings that had gone through his gallery, as well as their current whereabouts. When Dubuffet finally got the list, he discovered that Pierre Matisse had kept for himself a great majority of the works that the painter had sent him over the years. In Russell's words, "as Pierre Matisse bought his Dubuffets outright from the artist, they were his property, and he felt that what he did with them thereafter was his own business and no one else's" (283).What Russell does not say is that Matisse his had learned his business lessons from Matisse p[grave{e}]re.

For a keen understanding of the way the elder Matisse manipulated the American art market, one will want to turn to John 0'Brian's book, Ruthless Hedonism: The American Reception of Matisse. In this thoroughly researched, unforgiving little book by this scholar from the University of British Columbia, we learn a surprising number of facts about the reception of Matisse senior by American collectors, dealers, museum directors, and critics, including an interesting aside. Pierre Matisse's hoarding of paintings by Dubuffet apparently had a precedent in papa Matisse's decision at the time of his New York retrospective in 1931 to abstain from selling his works to New York dealers so he could keep them for himself. 0'Brian observes: "The implication of Matisse's new policy-a reduction in the supply of his work to the market and thus the likelihood of still higher prices-was not lost on dealers and collectors" (46).