Were Matisse and Bonnard friends? Yes. They were particularly close in the period of World War II when they lived near each other in the south of France and helped each other acquire materials that were difficult to come by. After Bonnard's death, when the critical backlash against him really started to develop, Matisse stoutly defended him. In 1948, the journal Cahiers d'Art published a very hostile article entitled "Is Pierre Bonnard a great painter?" Matisse's son said that he had seldom seen his father as angry as when he saw the article, and relates how Matisse scribbled over it: "Yes. I certify that Pierre Bonnard is a great painter." So what was this backlash about? The same thing that Picasso was saying, that there was a lack of decisiveness? That it is just merely homely, hedonistic painting. The difficulty, I think, is that if you don't spend time in front of his paintings, they will look simply beautiful. Finding something simply beautiful is not a bad reason for looking at a painting, and Bonnard's paintings are meant to give visual pleasure. But the longer you look at them, the more complex that pleasure becomes - and it is not all happiness. There is an uneasy, disturbing, and mysteriously exciting quality to his art, and I hope that people stay with it long enough to experience it. ©1998 The Museum of Modern Art, New York