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.