In this elegant set of stories, three modern women are touched in different ways by the paintings of Henri Matisse. In "Medusa's Ankles," a distinguished translator visits a hair salon hoping to regain a hint of her youthful looks. Hung on the wall before her is one of Matisse's iconic portraits. In "Art Works," the three inhabitants of one household-a generous wife, her petulant husband, and their regal housekeeper-make very different artists. And...

Describes how the artist Henri Matisse began cutting shapes out of paper and posting them on his walls, and how this simple pastime developed into a series of remarkable works of art, and presents fold-out reproductions of eight examples.

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...

"Picasso & Matisse. Manet & Degas. Pollack & de Kooning. Lucian Freud & Francis Bacon. This is the story of four pairs of artists -- each linked by friendship and a spirit of competitiveness. Taken together, they form an impressive lineage stretching across more than 150 years. But in each case, these relationships had a flashpoint, a damaging psychological event that seemed to mark both an end and a new beginning, a break that led onto new creative...