CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Matisse: The Pursuit of Harmony

Color Unbound: Matisse 1941-1954

March 24 – July 26, 2026

(Thames & Hudson, 2026)

Edited by Claudine Grammont

Acquavella Galleries, New York,

April 9- May 22, 2026

This year Marcel Duchamp (1887- 1968) and Henri Matisse (1869-1954), renowned modernists with very diverse artistic perspectives, are having major retrospectives. When they died, they were immense living influences upon contemporary artists. Duchamp was a key precursor for both Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, as well— of course— as for very many other living artists. And Matisse was said to make possible the abstractions of Morris Louis and the color field painters. But now, in a contemporary art world heavily concerned with gender and race, these two men have become more distant figures. Very little art in the present Whitney Biennale or the survey show of the Inaugural exhibition of the New Museum displays a debt to Duchamp or Matisse. And perhaps through ignorance, I don’t know of any artists who significantly use them as a model. Duchamp and Matisse were very influential, but now the art world has moved on. And so, the era when they had retrospectives at MoMA, Duchamp in 1973, Matisse in 1978, feels surprisingly distant.

One advantage of being a long-lived art writer is that you inevitably gain historical perspective. And since we now have commentaries by a new generation of art writers, this is the right time to look at Matisse and Duchamp’s achievement again. In a forthcoming review for Athenaeum Review, I discuss Duchamp’s current MoMA retrospective. And also here,........

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