A competition is an odd aesthetic for an art show. So how did the Matisse–Picasso opposition come about? It “was invented almost a hundred years ago by a handful of avant-garde poets and painters who had an appetite for grand pronouncements. The rivalry was also fostered by Gertrude and Leo Stein, who, in their salon, liked to put other people’s neuroses in a pot and let them simmer till they boiled over. Early on, Leo Stein made a point of telling Matisse and Picasso, then freshly aware of one another, that an important Parisian art dealer had spent the large sum of 2,000 francs on new paintings by Picasso and the very slightly larger sum of 2,200 francs on new paintings by Matisse. Then came a press release by the poet Apollinaire, and the duel was officially on…”