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Article: The other Matisse.(Art)(Henri Matisse's exhibition)
- Article from:
- New Criterion
- Article date:
- March 1, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Foundation for Cultural Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Sculpture, according to Clement Greenberg, lagged behind painting in ridding itself of things not intrinsic to its medium, partly because of its literal presence. Because it had less to discard, painting, he believed, led the way in jettisoning the inessential. This may explain why, at least until David Smith hit his stride, so many of the most exciting, inventive modern works in three-dimensions were made not by sculptors, but by painters. Liberated, perhaps, by their lack of conventional ideas about what a sculpture could or should be, painters such as Edgar Degas, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse created an "alternative tradition" of forward-looking sculpture as ...