AN UNUSUAL RELATIONSHIP - THE FINAL ENCOUNTER OF PICASSO AND MATISSE

Picasso and Matisse renewed their relationship in 1946 as the aging Ma tisse approached death. Picasso, ordinarily contemptuous of others and indifferent to their needs, revealed a markedly different attitude to ward Matisse, whom he admired and whose affection and approbation he s ought. The roots of Picasso's attitude are traced to his morbid concer n about bodily deterioration and fear of death. Matisse, apparently se rene in his confrontation with approaching death, represented an ideal to Picasso, a hoped-for remedy for anxiety, a confident paternal repr esentation so unlike his father. Freud's view of death, poetically exp ressed in his paper, ''On Transience, '' is a model for contrasting Pi casso's ''revolt . . . against mourning'' with Matisse's sense of symb olic immortality.