“The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art”, by Sebastian Smee

 

432 pages, Random House, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0812985078

In his book The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art, author Sebastian Smee examines the relationships between four pairs of artists: Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon; Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas; Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso; and Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. The overarching theme connecting each of these pairs is that there exists “an intimacy in art history that the textbooks ignore”, and Smee attempts “to reckon with that intimacy”. Mostly, I liked the book…well, not the bits with Freud and Bacon, or Pollock and de Kooning – I think that most Modern “Art”, at least in its 20^th Century manifestation, is an intellectual put-on – but there are several nagging points to be made.

Such as the rivalries themselves: each seemed somewhat contrived and weren’t completely convincing. I mean, the book is well-written in a chatty sorta way, but it didn’t really seem to hold together that well, and I never did get a sense as to just why he selected these particular pairings to dissect. The stories are interesting, to be sure, but it all seemed rather a stretch as to why these four pairings of dueling artistic egos trumped any others. Even with extensive familiarity with these artists, they were a bit of a stretch, as he really seemed to transform these men’s mostly-admiring (though not always) companionships into something more than they were, something negative and maybe destructive, rather than challenging and mostly positive.

The Art of Rivalry definitely has its merits, for it is not often that a book reveals the stories behind paintings and their painters. It truly was interesting reading about the reasons why this painting was created or that painting was altered; about the trajectory of an artist’s career as compared to another, and why; and the way two artists were related to each other personally and professionally. I just didn’t think that the whole “rivalry” angle was merited between each of Smee’s pairings all the time. While these men no doubt butted heads from time to time, they also seemed to forgive and forget and just roll right on through life – as Men are wont to do. Not a bad book, just a rather contrived one.