The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art

by Sebastian Smee Narrated by Bob Souer

Overview

Rivalry is at the heart of some of the most famous and fruitful relationships in history. The Art of Rivalry follows eight celebrated artists, each linked to a counterpart by friendship, admiration, envy, and ambition. All eight are household names today. But to achieve what they did, each needed the influence of a contemporary-one who was equally ambitious but possessed sharply contrasting strengths and weaknesses.



Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas were close associates whose personal bond frayed after Degas painted a portrait of Manet and his wife. Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso swapped paintings, ideas, and influences as they jostled for the support of collectors like Leo and Gertrude Stein and vied for the leadership of a new avant-garde. Jackson Pollock's uninhibited style of "action painting" triggered a breakthrough in the work of his older rival, Willem de Kooning. Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon met in the early 1950s, when Bacon was being hailed as Britain's most exciting new painter and Freud was working in relative obscurity. Their intense but asymmetrical friendship came to a head when Freud painted a portrait of Bacon, which was later stolen.

Editorial Reviews

The New York Times - John Williams

Mr. Smee's skills as a critic are evident throughout. He is persuasive and vivid about the art itself…The Art of Rivalry is rooted in a closely observed theory, but it roams in a way geared to nonspecialist readers, part mini-biographies, part broader art history. Reading it could lead to a crowded cart on your next trip to the bookstore. Its four sections, each about 90 pages, pack in a lot, but these are subjects that sprawl far past Mr. Smee's incisive framing of them. In addition to whetting one's appetite for full biographies of all eight of its central figures, The Art of Rivalry arouses deeper curiosity about a number of supporting characters, including Charles Baudelaire, Gertrude Stein, Peggy Guggenheim and Lee Krasner. You leave this book both nourished and hungry for more about the art, its creators and patrons, and the relationships that seed the ground for moments spent at the canvas.

Publishers Weekly

★ 06/06/2016
In this beautifully written book, Pulitzer Prize–winning art critic Smee (Lucian Freud) explores the dramatic relationships between Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas, and Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Concerned with “yielding, intimacy, and openness to influence” more than pure rivalry, Smee provides a concise biography of each pair, highlighting the similarities and differences between their lives, philosophies, and personalities. This illuminating text draws connections between the pairs (the personal tension between Degas and Manet is, for example, similar to that between Freud and Bacon) and cleverly links events in the artist’s lives, such as two parallel tragedies within Matisse and Picasso’s close families, and Freud’s and Bacon’s separate—though similarly intense and devastating—love affairs. This ambitious and impressive work is an utterly absorbing read about four important relationships in modern art. (Aug.)

From the Publisher

Gripping . . . Mr. Smee’s skills as a critic are evident throughout. He is persuasive and vivid. . . . The Art of Rivalry is rooted in a closely observed theory, but it roams in a way geared to nonspecialist readers, part mini-biographies, part broader art history. . . . You leave this book both nourished and hungry for more about the art, its creators and patrons, and the relationships that seed the ground for moments spent at the canvas.”—The New York Times
 
“With novella-like detail and incisiveness [Sebastian Smee] opens up the worlds of four pairs of renowned artists. . . . Each of his portraits is a biographical gem, deftly taking social milieus, family backgrounds, and the art controversies of the day into account. . . . Smee’s vivid, agile prose is especially good at evoking the temperaments of the personalities involved. . . . The Art of Rivalry is a pure, informative delight, written with canny authority.”—The Boston Globe

“Bacon liked to say his portraiture aimed to capture ‘the pulsations of a person.’ Revealing these rare creators as the invaluable catalysts they also were, Smee conveys exactly that on page after page. . . . His brilliant group biography is one of a kind.”—The Atlantic

“Perceptive . . . [Sebastian Smee showcases] the crucial painter-vs.-painter passions that spurred eight brilliant modern artists toward their greatest work. . . . Smee is onto something important. His book may bring us as close as we’ll ever get to understanding the connections between these bristly bonds and brilliance.”—The Christian Science Monitor
 
“In this intriguing work of art history and psychology, The Boston Globe’s art critic looks at the competitive friendships of Matisse and Picasso, Manet and Degas, Pollock and de Kooning, and Freud and Bacon. All four relationships illuminate the creative process—both its imaginative breakthroughs and its frustrating blocks.”—Newsday

“A fresh and fruitful approach to art history . . . [Sebastian] Smee’s double portraits are deeply moving, even haunting in their investigations of artistic and emotional symbioses of incalculable intricacy and consequence.”—Booklist (starred review)

“Beautifully written . . . This ambitious and impressive work is an utterly absorbing read about four important relationships in modern art.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“The keynotes of Sebastian Smee’s criticism have always included a fine feeling for the what of art—he knows how to evoke the way pictures really strike the eye—and an equal sense of the how of art: how art emerges from the background of social history. To these he now adds a remarkable capacity for getting down the who of art—the enigma of artists’ personalities, and the way that, two at a time, they can often intersect to reshape each in the other’s image. With these gifts all on the page together, The Art of Rivalry gives us a remarkable and engrossing book on pretty much the whole of art.”—Adam Gopnik, author of Paris to the Moon and The Table Comes First
 
“Modern art’s major pairs of frenemies are a subject so fascinating, it’s strange to have a book on it only now—and a stroke of luck, for us, that the author is Sebastian Smee. He brings the perfect combination of artistic taste and human understanding, and a prose style as clear as spring water, to the drama and occasional comedy of men who inspired and annoyed one another to otherwise inexplicable heights of greatness.”—Peter Schjeldahl, art critic for The New Yorker

“This is a magnificent book on the relationships at the roots of artistic genius. Smee offers a gripping tale of the fine line between friendship and competition, tracing how the ties that torment us most are often the ones that inspire us most.”—Adam Grant, Wharton professor and New York Times bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take

From the Publisher - AUDIO COMMENTARY

"This ambitious and impressive work is an utterly absorbing read about four important relationships in modern art." —Publishers Weekly Starred Review

MARCH 2017 - AudioFile

This audiobook could have been a conventional biography of eight modern artists and the artistic influence they had on each other, but instead it is lightened with gossipy scandal, drunken fights, slashed paintings, and promiscuity. In a wonderful deep voice that evokes a seriousness of purpose, narrator Bob Souer also subtly incorporates the amusing undertones and explosive meltdowns in the text. The book is an entertaining and informative dive into the fraught relationships between Freud and Bacon, Manet and Degas, Picasso and Matisse, and Pollock and de Kooning. Each painter fed off the other, urging excellence but with undercurrents of jealousy and contempt—the contemporary term “frenemy” comes to mind. This is a fine match of interesting mini-biographies and an absorbing, deft performance. A.B. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2016-05-18
An exploration of the relationships among eight artists who were friends, mentors, and/or rivals and the particular incidents that changed their lives.It may have been a portrait sitting, an exchange of works, a studio visit, or the opening of an exhibition. However they came to pass, writes Pulitzer Prize-winning Boston Globe art critic Smee (Nonfiction Writing/Wellesley Coll.; Freud, 2015, etc.), these relationships greatly affected the psyches of some of the greatest artists of their time. Some have cast them as rivals, others as enemies, but the author rejects many of these opinions. Francis Bacon's influence on Lucian Freud helped loosen his style, and Jackson Pollock's works drove Willem de Kooning to open up his manner of creation. All were undeniable talents, and their abilities were changed significantly by these relationships. However, none of them was ever an acolyte (imagine Pablo Picasso ever admitting anyone was better than he). Henri Matisse said it best in that he could never tolerate rivals, but he thrived in their presence. They all sought radical originality, and each man's art was affected by lovers, successes, and failures, as well as hard drinking and brave collectors of modern art like Peggy Guggenheim and Gertrude and Sarah Stein. Would Edgar Degas ever have moved out into Paris' streets without Edouard Manet's urging ,or would Picasso ever have moved to cubism without the specter of Matisse's maturity and pressure? In addition to digging into these intimate relationships, Smee explains their work in in an accessible way. He clearly and vividly explains the monumental effect each man had on modern art, from Manet's daring Olympia to Pollock's Number 1. Smee takes readers deep into the beginnings of modern art in a way that not only enlightens, but also builds a stronger appreciation of the influences that created the environment that fostered its development.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170823307
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	09/27/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	1,268,039

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chapter 1
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Excerpted from "The Art of Rivalry"
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Copyright © 2016 Sebastian Smee.
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