The odd couple

The fashionable computer-speak of Matisse Picasso is tiresome but neatly encapsulates the Siamese twin thesis that lies at the root of this exhibition, which is roughly that this celebrated pair of painters were bound by remarkable affinities and contrasts for almost half a century and that their aesthetic lives were symbiotic, the honeysuckle and the rose.

Thirty groupings of their works have been assembled to make the point. Some of us will have considerable difficulty with the thesis, seeing no kinship in their innovations, disagreeing with the notion that even their contrasts were stimulated by each other, uncertain that everything they did was unquestionably the stuff of genius. But we sceptics must see the exhibition as another stage in the determination of some critics to turn Matisse (painter of 'Le Luxe', right) into the most important artist of the 20th century - ignore that argument and enjoy what we can of pictures that sometimes seem very far from masterpieces.

Matisse Picasso, from Sat 11 May, Tate Modern, Bankside, SE1 (020-7401 5120).