There is a general recognition of a 'late style' in music and literature - a turn to a vital asperity towards the end of a life of composition à la Beethoven or Yeats - but less so in visual art, at least among prominent Modernists. One exception is Matisse, who, in his late cutouts, returned with gusto to 'the purity of means' that marked his early Fauve paintings. With a temporary piece at the Grand Palais in Paris that also combines simplicity and grandeur, Richard Serra anticipates a late style of his own.

LRB 22 May 2008 | PDF Download