Three stories, each around a particular Matisse painting. In Medusa's Ankles, a hairdresser informs a customer he is considering leaving his wife because she has allowed her ankles to get fat. The novel describes the reaction of the customer, herself conscious of her waning looks.

Pigasso, a talented pig, and Mootisse, an artistic bull, live across the road from one another, but when conflicts arise they build fences that ultimately become modern art masterpieces. Includes biographies of the real-life artists, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso.

When young Pablo Picasso arrived in Paris in October 1900 he made his way up the hillside of Montmartre ... The real revolution in the arts first took place not, as is commonly supposed, in the 1920s to the accompaniment of the Charleston, black jazz and mint juleps but more quietly and intimately, in the shadow of the windmills-- artificial and real-- and in the cafes and cabarets of Montmartre during the first decade of the century. The cross-fertilization...

"The major writings of Henri Matisse (1869-1954), with the exception of the letters, are collected here along with transcriptions of important interviews and broadcasts given at various stages of Matisse's career. Jack Flam provides a biography, a general introduction that addresses the development of Matisse's aesthetic values and theories, and a critical introduction for each text."--Page 4 of cover

When Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was forced to give up painting completely in the mid-1940s due to a serious illness, he began to work with painted paper and a pair of scissors, cutting out forms at will. These works represented a revolution in modern art. Matisse - a remarkable man who was scarcely able to leave his bed and already considered lost to the world of painting - had thus found a way of outsmarting fate and creating a perfect synthesis of...