Original subtitles

[tense music]

[projector clicking]

[fireworks roaring]

[bright, cheerful music]

In 1900, Paris was capital of the world.

A cosmopolitan crowd filled the gardens of the Trocadero,

encircling the palace and pavilions which had been built

for the Exposition Universelle.

Everywhere French innovation, invention and ingenuity

were being celebrated.

Salons were abuzz with a literary

and intellectual life whose influence was felt far and wide.

Foreign painters, sculptors, writers, poets and musicians

crossed paths here in Paris, the city of lights,

the freest in the world.

Off the beaten path and far-removed from this excitement,

a little village awoke to the dawning

of a new century: Montmartre.

Its heroes, whose names were still unknown,

would change the face of art forever.

A young man climbed the hill to Montmartre.

He wore a black frock coat, and a top hat.

He was extremely poor.

The man's name was Max Jacob.

A poet and illustrator, he had arrived in Paris looking

for creativity, art, friends, and happiness.

Max Jacob chose Montmartre for its history.

Not the history of the Sacre-Coeur Basilica,

a block of white stone erected to expiate the memory

of the Paris Commune, but for its raucous cabarets,

outstanding artists, and the laughter

and singing that permeated the Butte.

The streets were rife with history:

the red and black colors of revolt,

the scathing satires of Aristide Bruant and Alphonse Allais,

the ghosts of la Goulue and Rayon d'Or.

[mysterious, haunting music]

One morning in June 1901, the poet stopped

in front of the windows of a gallery on rue Laffitte.

Fascinated, he discovered an entirely blue painting

of a couple.

He pushed open the door, and found himself

in a dusty shop cluttered with newspapers

and paintings facing the walls.

A man was dozing behind a desk.

His name was Ambroise Vollard, Cezanne's dealer.

A customer asked him, "Do you have any Renoirs?

Vollard got up out of his chair, went to the cellar

and returned with two works by Renoir.

He propped them against the wall and returned to his chair

where he immediately dozed off again.

How much?

200 francs.

170.

220, I said

How do I know it's not a fake?

You don't.

I wasn't there when Renoir painted it.

[bright, ethereal music]

The customer grumbled something

and left, leaving Max his place.

There's a painting in the window.

The little picture on the right.

"Picasso," Vollard replied. "Unsellable."

An hour later, Max rang

at an apartment on Boulevard Clichy.

He was ushered inside and offered a seat in the middle

of a group of Spaniards.

None spoke French.

Pablo Picasso was there.

He was a man of small stature,

with broad shoulders and deep eyes.

[upbeat Spanish music]

Max congratulated him.

The two men shook hands, slapped backs, and embraced

without being able to understand

a word the other was saying.

So Beethoven served as a common language.

They played the 7th symphony on the guitar,

belting out the "Ode to Joy" at the top of their lungs.

[broom thudding]

At sunrise, Max left his new friends.

They promised to see each other again

and to never part ways.

[bells chiming]

[laughing]

[metal clinking]

The day after their first meeting,

Picasso and his gang paid the poet a visit.

Max read them his first published story,

"King Kabul and Gawain the Kitchen Boy."

"Gawain walked up 50 steps of white marble

between two walls of green marble.

Princess Julia's servants, who were all Negros

or Chinamen, bowed when he appeared,

because he showed them the King's signature:

Kabul the First, King of the Balibrigians,

Emperor of the Green Isles."

No one understood a word.

Even so, Picasso wept with emotion.

He swore to Max, "You are France's greatest poet."

And Max replied, "And you are Spain's greatest painter!"

"Spain's? I'm the world's greatest painter."

Picasso thought so,

but the art dealers didn't agree.

When he first arrived in Paris,

he had painted like Toulouse-Lautrec,

in a lively and good-humored style.

The public liked it.

[gentle, cheerful music]

[audience applauding]

Then he withdrew into blue, El Greco-inspired monochromes.

The style reflected the poverty and despair

in which the small Spanish community

of Montmartre had been living.

[eerie pipe organ music]

But Ambroise Vollard couldn't sell them,

so he wouldn't buy them.

Neither he, nor the others.

Who were the others?

A former clown, an ex-pastry chef,

and a sideshow wrestler making a comeback,

all self-styled street vendors and art merchants.

[bright piano music]

Canvases by Suzanne Valadon, Maurice Utrillo,

Le Douanier Rousseau and Picasso found their place

on the curb, between a rusted iron

and a baby carriage with no wheels.

Max was with his friend Pablo when one

of these dealers walked up to the painter,

"I need you to paint me a bouquet of flowers.

It's urgent.

I promised it to a customer, and I have none in stock."

"I don't have any white," replied Picasso.

"You don't need white," the man answered.

"White is so ordinary."

Poetry didn't put food on the table,

so Max Jacob dabbled in other fields.

He was a piano teacher, private tutor, hired-hand,

art critic, street sweeper, bailiff's clerk,

secretary, apprentice-carpenter, and even a governess.

Recently, he had been earning a living fortune-telling:

tarot cards, palm reading, coffee grinds.

"Don't be stingy, ladies and gentlemen!"

Ever since they met, Max Jacob and Picasso

had been inseparable.

To support his new friend, the poet added another string

to his bow, landing a job as stock boy

in a department store.

He swept the floor and delivered purchases,

working to pay for Picasso's supplies, meals,

and the little room they now shared.

The place was so small,

they had to take turns sleeping:,

Max at night while Pablo painted,

and Pablo during the day while Max was at work.

After eight months, Max was fired for general incompetence,

but never stopped championing his friend's work.

Passing himself off as a rich collector,

he would knock at the doors of galleries:

"I want to see all your Picassos.

He's a great painter, a genius!"

In this way, he hoped to burnish the image

of his favorite artist, whom nobody had ever heard of.

[gentle, dreamy music]

One day in 1904, Picasso brought his friend Max

to a bar near the Saint-Lazare station.

He wanted to introduce him to a former bank clerk

he had met several days earlier.

[pencil scraping]

The man Max met was a 24 year-old with a tie, waistcoat

and pocketwatch: a well-dressed bourgeois.

His name was Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky.

By his own account, he was the offspring of a former officer

in the royal army of The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies,

and the daughter of a Polish officer

in the Pope's private chambers.

Fancy words for an unglamorous reality.

Guillaume Apollinaire was a half-breed and a foreigner.

His father had abandoned him

and his mother a few years after he was born.

[horn honking]

She had dragged the small family from hotel

to rented room, from city to palace, looking for fortune,

luck, and lovers an adventuress of love, a free-thinker.

This represented the epitome of libertinage at that time.

Guillaume Apollinaire spoke five languages.

He was incredibly cultivated, an immense poet.

He would stroll the streets of Paris humming a melody

to himself, always the same one,

to which his rhymes and verse then attached themselves.

[upbeat orchestral music]

[cheerful, upbeat music]

He was a man of many talents.

He founded a review, "Le festin d'Esope,"

and edited several anthologies,

including one entitled "Les maîtres de l'amour."

He wrote a short erotic novel

that was distributed under the table,

"Mirely, or The Cheap Little Hole."

Finally, this incredible jack-of-all-trades

was editor-in-chief

of the "Guide to Managing a Private Income."

He knew nothing about the stock market

but did a good job pretending.

They brought him to Montmartre.

On the way, he picked up the newspaper "Le Temps."

"Perfect for colitis," he explained to the horrified vendor,

"You apply it to your intestines and you're cured."

In short, he was an intellectual

and a practical joker all rolled up in one.

[cheerful whistling]

He was also a great sensualist.

"You, whose name I don't know, oh my neighbor

Slender as a honeybee, oh fairy, appearing

Sometimes at the window and sometimes slippery

Serpentine, undulating wickedly, oh neighbor

And yet also sister of blossoms, oh cluster of wisteria."

When it came to women, he'd prepare a plan of attack,

persist, find another angle, begin again,

and when things didn't work out, he'd despair.

You might say he was unlucky in love.

But he would find consolation at the dinner table.

[military drumming]

His belt loosened a notch,

he would await the starting signal,

and dive headfirst into the menu of dishes and wines.

[intense midtempo music]

His favorite partners were two painters he met on a train:

Maurice Vlaminck and Andre Derain.

With them, the rule was simple,

they'd walk into a restaurant,

and try to eat everything on the menu.

And when they had finished, they'd begin again.

The first to be full would pay the check.

The band was coming together, but still needed a home.

It was Picasso who found it.

A former piano factory built in 1860 that had been turned

into an artist's residence thanks to the wooden panels

dividing up the space.

One had to enter through the top floor

and then descend down dark corridors that were scorching

in the summer, icy cold in the winter.

[door creaking]

On the second floor there was running water,

but nowhere else.

And there was only one toilet.

Picasso was enchanted.

He looked avidly at this strange structure

which resembled no other,

and dubbed it the Trapper's House.

But Max Jacob had another idea.

The house was reminiscent of those flat-bottomed barges

used to scrub laundry in the Seine.

He gave it a name which would become known the world over:

the Bateau-Lavoir.

[gentle, peaceful music]

Picasso moved into the very top floor.

On the door of his workshop he wrote these words in chalk,

inspired by the names of certain Parisian cafes:

[speaking in foreign language]

His apartment consisted of a tiny bedroom

with rotting wooden floors, and a room furnished

with a mattress and an old iron stove.

An odor of black tobacco, gas and linseed oil

hung in the air.

There was also a trained white mouse, and Frika,

a friendly mutt.

There was clutter everywhere, except on the bed.

There languorously reclined a tall 23-year-old brunette

of exquisite grace, whom the painter contemplated

with all the powerful magnetism of his dark eyes.

Her name was Fernande Olivier.

She was his great love.

She had replaced the women from the brothels

and several others who had come and gone.

Picasso was crazy about her.

He, the Andalusian, still rough around the edges,

who spoke broken French, on the arm

of this slightly bourgeois woman,

with her fancy clothes and perfume.

He was jealous, too.

He wanted to lock the beautiful Fernande away in his tower,

to prevent her from ever leaving.

He preferred doing all the chores and errands himself

rather than risk her trading glances with someone else.

[playful music]

He forbade her from posing for anyone else.

The day he discovered that Kees van Dongen

had painted her half-naked, with one breast fully exposed,

she immediately got slapped for it.

[slapping]

The Dutch painter, Kees van Dongen,

lived a few floors below.

In the tradition of Utrillo and Toulouse-Lautrec,

he painted life in Montmartre,

prostitutes pounding the pavement, the shopkeepers

of the Place du Tertre, and the dancers

of the Moulin de la Galette.

The big and beefy Andre Derain, also a regular

at the Bateau Lavoir, was very hands-on.

According to his models, he would sometimes sit them

on his knee, with one hand on their waists

and a paintbrush in the other.

Seeing wasn't enough, he also needed to touch.

His friend Maurice de Vlaminck was an instinctive,

passionate painter with a big mouth.

He hated not only schools and academies, but also museums,

cemeteries, and churches.

He believed in violent anarchism and championed its colors.

The third strongman of the band was a Norman born

in Argenteuil, Georges Braque.

[bright accordion music]

Calm, solid and lumbering like a bear,

Braque impressed the girls he danced

with at the Moulin de la Galette.

When he took the omnibus which crossed the Seine

to the Left Bank, he would climb to the top deck and sing,

accompanying himself on the accordion.

When he arrived at the Bateau-Lavoir,

Braque was wearing blue coveralls and a hat jammed

over his head. The others, inspired by the idea,

tried to outdo him.

In keeping with his painting of the period,

Derain opted for loud colors, a green suit,

red waistcoat, yellow shoes.

Vlaminck sported a tweed jacket and bowler hat

decorated with a bluejay feather.

Picasso chose rope sandals, a cap, and overalls

of the kind worn by zinc miners,

which had faded after too many washings.

Max Jacob appeared in either a magician's costume,

silk cape, collapsible gibus hat, and monocle,

or the traditional garb of Brittany,

a duffle coat with frogging.

As for Apollinaire, he was never seen

without his suit, tie and waistcoat.

The band would wander the streets of Montmartre

dressed to the nines, and cut across the vineyards

after dark to finish the evening at The Lapin agile.

[cheerful whistling]

[dogs barking]

This was Pere Frede's establishment.

[speaking in foreign language]

He had bought the Cabaret des Assassins

from the illustrator and poet of the Commune, Andre Gill.

[singing in foreign language]

All of Montmartre came to the Lapin.

On weekends, regulars mixed with bourgeois Parisians

who came to slum it in this joint full

of women and artists.

Over drinks and music, Picasso and his friends

met the other fixtures of Montmartre:

the writers Francis Carco, Roland Dorgeles, and Mac Orlan,

and the actors Harry Baur and Charles Dullin

who gave passionate poetry readings.

They listened to Guillaume Apollinaire recite his poems.

"My handsome gypsy, my lover

Listen to the clocks that chime

We love each other desperately

We think we are unseen

But we were poorly hidden

For the clocks see us from their towers

And tell the world."

An unexpected visitor stood near the hearth.

This artist was not at all like the others.

He had a greyish complexion, long hair, walked on four legs

and didn't talk, but brayed.

He was Aliboron, the Pere Frede's donkey.

[dog barking]

One day, a couple of pranksters attached a paintbrush

to its tail, dipped it in a pot of paint

and placed an empty canvas behind the animal.

That was how "The Sun Falling Asleep Over the Adriatic"

came to be painted by the four-legged artist Boronali,

an anagram of Aliboron.

A new movement, excessivism, was born.

Imagine the scandal when the work was presented

at the Salon des Independents.

[donkey braying]

At sunrise, the most loyal members of the Bateau-Lavoir

would leave the Pere Frede

and scatter into the neighboring buildings.

There, they would swipe bottles of milk from the doorsteps

of bourgeois homes.

Most would return to the Bateau Lavoir

and go straight to bed, but a few would visit the brothels

which were still opened at that hour.

They would all meet again the next day,

after a few hours of sleep.

[upbeat music]

[women laughing]

The band's favorite outing brought them

to Boulevard Rochechouart on the outskirts of Montmartre,

where the Medrano Circus has pitched its tent.

[audience applauding] [audience cheering]

[audience laughs]

The painters befriended the clowns there,

Grock first among them.

Apollinaire wrote:

"The strollers in the plain

walk the length of gardens

before the doors of grey inns

through villages without churches,

and the children gone before

the others follow dreaming,

each fruit tree resigns itself

When they signal from afar.

They have burdens round or square drums

and golden tambourines.

Apes and bears, wise animals

gather coins as they progress."

[man speaking drowned out by applauding]

Picasso answered the poet's rhymes with painting.

Influenced by his friends from the circus,

he put the Blue Period behind him

and embraced the cheerful colors of fraternity and romance.

He painted "Maternity," which ushered in his Rose Period.

[bright, gentle music]

With the beautiful Fernande at his side,

Picasso strolled the streets of sunny Bohemia.

However, a cloud hung over their lives at the Bateau Lavoir:

Fernande Olivier could not have children.

The sense of loss was so painful that she finally went

to the orphanage on rue Caulaincourt and brought home

a little girl of about ten.

They called her Raymonde.

For a few weeks, the little girl commanded all

of their attention.

Picasso, the good artist-father,

did a portrait of her in India ink.

[child laughing]

Max Jacob grew attached to her

and would take her on walks through Montmartre.

The painter Utrillo would pretend to be a locomotive

and go choo-chooing by.

[train whistling] [train chugging]

But after a while, mommy and daddy Picasso

seemed to prefer it when the little girl was out.

She took up more space than the dog

and the white mouse combined.

She was noisy.

She scribbled on the paintings.

Picasso could no longer sleep part

of the day and work at night.

Nothing was the same.

Things got so bad that, three months after adopting her,

Fernande asked Max Jacob for a big favor.

Could he return the little girl to the orphanage?

Naturally, Max agreed.

[bell chiming]

"The child took my hand

and I protected her from misfortune," he wrote.

[water burbling]

With her departure came a new arrival.

The child had gone, but a young woman appeared.

She was a 20-year-old painter

by the name of Marie Laurencin.

Picasso pushed her into Apollinaire's arms,

and he never let go.

[upbeat music]

They moved in together.

But their domestic life seemed

to reawaken the poet's bourgeois obsessions,

starting with his waistcoat and pocket watch.

When he entertained, guests were forbidden to make a mess,

sit on the bed, or eat without permission.

Guillaume watched over his muse's every move.

He was demanding, tyrannical, and as jealous as Picasso.

In short, they were not easy men to live with.

[peaceful music]

Regardless, Fernande Olivier

and Marie Laurencin didn't get along.

The young painter did a portrait of Fernande,

which she wasn't crazy about.

[cup clinking]

Marie Laurencin's bourgeois manners don't go over well

at the Bateau-Lavoir.

Her greatest talent was thought

to be her ability to jump rope: her favorite pastime.

But they couldn't let Guillaume find out

that they badmouthed her behind his back.

One day, Max Jacob composed a little ditty:

[upbeat music]

[singing in foreign language]

When Apollinaire found out about the song,

he flew into a rage and excommunicated Max.

Go and stand in the corner!

[dreamy, peaceful music]

One spring morning, Max was on his way to rue Ravignan.

When he came within view of the Bateau-Lavoir,

an extraordinary spectacle stopped him dead in his tracks.

A horse-drawn cab was parked out front,

chock full of paintings which the poet

recognized immediately as Picassos.

As Ambroise Vollard drove away,

Max rushed down into the bowels of the Bateau-Lavoir.

He thanked all the Gods in heaven for coming

to the aid of his venerated friend.

Vollard, it turned out, had bought the lot

for two thousand golden francs.

Two thousand gold francs!

That evening the Champagne flowed at the Bateau Lavoir.

The following day, Picasso brought himself a wallet

that he slipped into the inner pocket of his vest,

which he fastened with a safety pin.

Watch out thieves!

In that year of 1906, Vollard wasn't the only dealer

to have paid Picasso a visit.

A few months earlier, the young collector Andre Level

had knocked at the door of the Bateau Lavoir.

He told such a generous story that everyone was overcome

with respect for this art aficionado.

Lacking the means to acquire contemporary art by himself,

the young man had gotten together with a few friends

to found an association, La Peau de l'ours,

which bought art for the community.

Ten years later, the works would be resold.

A share of the profits would go back to the painters.

How could one not be tempted by such an idea?

All the more so since the friends of the association decided

to buy several paintings by Picasso.

Another time, Max Jacob ran into two new visitors

in the depths of the Bateau-Lavoir.

Two flamboyant American collectors, Gertrude and Leo Stein.

The woman was massive as a lumberjack,

with leather sandals and short-cropped hair.

She was as elegant as an ox

and had the handshake of a bodyguard.

The man was very stiff, strict,

and appeared almost delicate at his sister's side.

The Steins discovered Picasso at Clovis Sagot's,

a clown and pastry chef turned art seller.

Standing before the proposed work, Gertrude looked dubious.

"Is it the legs that bother you?" the merchant asked.

"The feet."

"Then cut them off!"

They did no such thing.

Leo Stein finally bought the 1905 painting

"Young Girl with a Basket of Flowers" for 500 francs.

Then he convinced his sister to accompany him

to the home of this Spanish painter

neither had heard of until now.

Picasso and Gertrude became fast friends.

Fascinated by her physique, the Spaniard asked

to paint the American woman's portrait.

He wanted her to look like Ingres'

"The Portrait of Monsieur Bertin,"

seated, massive, definitive.

[thunder roaring]

[somber music]

[chimes tinkling]

But after 85 sittings, Picasso finally gave up.

"I don't see you anymore when I look at you,"

he confessed to his model.

He decided to leave Montmartre

where inspiration was lacking.

[train honking] [train chugging]

He went to Gosol, a Catalonian village nestled high

in the Pyrenees, not far from Andorra.

One could get to it on a mule, and once there,

the rest of the world vanished.

There was nothing but nature all around,

the yellows and auburns of the mountains,

the purity of a life untouched by the modern world.

The inhabitants, friendly and hospitable,

were for the most part smugglers.

This was exactly what Picasso needed.

[dog barking] [sheep bleating]

In this barren landscape, he honed his style.

He looked for what Gauguin had found in Tahiti:

a purity, a form of primitivism, a novelty.

At first, he painted in the style of Ingres,

whose Turkish Bath had fascinated him

t the Autumn Salon in 1905.

The result, "La toilette," was an extremely classical work.

Next he combined several sources of inspiration,

from Iberian statues from before the Roman conquest,

seen at the Louvre, to the exaggerated features

and oversized eyes of the 12th century Virgin of Gosol.

[somber choral music]

Picasso searched and experimented, looking inward.

He painted "Nude with Joined Hands" in 1906.

It represented Fernande naked

against a rose-colored background, with her hair tied

in a bun and hands clasped.

The face was darker than the body, the gaze averted,

the eyes without sockets were long and expressionless slits.

[eerie droning music]

[train honking] [train chugging]

Back in Paris, where he had returned

after a typhoid epidemic broke out in Gosol,

Picasso stood in front

of the unfinished portrait of Gertrude Stein.

[chaotic orchestral music]

Without laying eyes on his model again,

he painted the head he had been unable to represent,

as if in a single stroke.

It was the sketch of a mask.

A new art form was taking its first steps: cubism.

Every Saturday, the Steins would entertain

in the workshop adjacent to their house on rue de Fleurus.

One entered a vast room, which contained varnished

Italian renaissance furniture, and walls without an inch

of bare space left on them.

They were completely covered with the works

of Gauguin, Delacroix, El Greco, Manet, Braque, Vallotton,

Cezanne, Renoir, Matisse, Picasso:

the two Americans' personal favorites.

Once a week, painters, writers and poets would come

to the Steins' to eat and drink to their heart's delight.

[silverware clinking]

When Picasso would show up, surrounded

by the beefy Apollinaire and the three strongmen

of the band, Braque, Derain, and Vlaminck, Gertrude Stein

could not help thinking of Napoleon

escorted by his grenadiers.

[military drum music]

But Napoleon was not happy,

he glared at his portrait of Stein hanging on the wall.

The lady of the house had had it varnished.

A visitor came over and looked at it:

"Is that Gertrude Stein?"

"Yes."

"It doesn't look like her.

"No matter, she will end up looking like it."

Meanwhile, Braque was furious: one of his works,

placed above the hearth, was blackening

under the steady assault of smoke.

A flock of freeloaders stood in a circle

around the lady of the house.

Gertrude Stein sat in front of her portrait

like Saint Louis under his tree and gazed at Matisse

and Picasso with curiosity.

Matisse and Picasso could be compared,

the image came from one of them,

to the North and South Poles.

The former had kept a stiffness perfectly suited

to the bailiff's clerk he was in his youth.

He was serious, he didn't laugh.

His family consisted not of friends,

but of his wife and daughter.

He rarely entertained.

Picasso was the bohemian,

while Matisse represented an elegant brand of poverty.

Food was equally scarce at either man's abode,

but in Matisse's home appearances were kept up.

Madam knew how to prepare a beef stew.

She was completely devoted to her husband's cause.

One day, Gertrude Stein saw a magnificent fruit basket

sitting on the table, but was forbidden to touch it.

It was reserved for the artist's work.

The heat had been turned off in the apartment,

so that the fruit wouldn't spoil.

Matisse painted his still-life bundled in a coat,

his hands covered in woolen mittens.

[somber music]

That said, Matisse wasn't only the North Pole.

He liked to make a splash, too.

At the Autumn Salon of 1905, Matisse, along with Vlaminck,

Derain and a few others,

had created an unforgettable scandal.

Their works, which threw richly vibrant colors

in the faces of more than a few conservative visitors,

provoked giggles and outrage.

Their works were grouped into a single room

that the art critic Louis Vauxcelles, who was very popular

but totally hostile to modern art

called the wild beasts' cage, "the cage aux fauves."

And that's how Fauvism was born.

The scandal was so great that the President of the Republic

refused to inaugurate the event.

The press had a field day.

The Figaro spoke of a can

of paint thrown at the public's head.

A year later, at the Salon des Independants,

Matisse exhibited only one work.

It would become legendary:

"The Joy of Life."

The painting was monumental,

both in terms of size and originality.

It reflected a mixture of the primitivism the artist

had discovered in Collioure and in African statuettes,

a Gauguinesque distortion of body shapes,

and a dreamlike poetry reminiscent

of Mallarme's "Afternoon of the Faun."

[laughing] [whistling]

The critics went to town.

Joining in the laughter and derision of those

who turned their backs on it, they spoke

of transcendental ramblings, of an empty canvas.

They attacked the juxtaposition of colors,

the anatomical distortions, and the lines which were felt

to be either too delicate or not delicate enough.

[whistling]

The following year, Matisse sinned again.

This time with the 1907 Blue Nude, Souvenir of Biskra,

inspired by a journey the painter made to Algeria.

The critics were again unmoved by these bizarre forms

and iridescent blue skin.

Louis Vauxcelles admitted that he just didn't comprehend it.

Others described the artist as a double-dealer,

his painting as a universe of ugliness.

That year, Matisse found himself at the forefront

of the avant-guard.

He was the most scandalous of innovators, a fauve.

And while this fauve was preparing to set up his academy

at the Couvent des Oiseaux, Picasso was at work.

Amidst the disorder of the Bateau-Lavoir,

he pursued his own experiments.

As Max Jacob looked on in bafflement,

he drew forms and figures

that recalled prehistoric cave paintings.

He painted "Self-portrait" in 1906.

Then "Self-portrait with Palette."

In 1907, he began several female busts,

notably "Bust of a Woman or a Sailor."

He prepared his response to Matisse.

He sharpened his knives.

Like many others, he had been rattled by his rival's work.

But he thought that those

who called Matisse's painting revolutionary were mistaken.

It was a high point in art, but in classical art.

This was also the view that Kandinsky,

a master of abstraction, held at about the same time.

In Matisse he saw one of the great masters

of modern painting, a genius of color,

but a visceral impressionist who hadn't yet broken

with conventional conceptions of beauty.

[dramatic music]

In the autumn of 1907, Picasso invited Matisse

to visit him at the Bateau-Lavoir.

Matisse brought a portrait he had painted of his daughter,

Marguerite, as a gift.

Picasso thanked him and showed him his own works.

Matisse immediately understood what and whom his host

had been directing his violence against.

It was against art that had been called modern,

in other words, against himself, Matisse.

When he made his way back down the steeply sloping streets

of the Butte Montmartre, he stopped in front of a wall

on which a phrase has been hastily painted.

Matisse will drive you mad.

He wasn't mad, he was furious.

And he would have been even more so,

had he known what mission Picasso had assigned

the musketeers of his band: to go to the bazaar

on the rue des Abbesses and buy Eureka-brand darts

with plastic tips.

That evening, at place Ravignan, the Spanish painter

lined up his troops.

Darts in hand, they stood facing the portrait

of little Miss Matisse.

They took turns firing.

The duel had begun.

[sword clanging]