Henri Matisse Understanding Modern Art

few artists in history have had such a wide-ranging impact on art and culture as the french painter henry matisse his distinctly colorful style and often quite experimental works caught the attention of many collectors and critics and made him alongside picasso one of the most well-known and influential artists of the early 20th century matisse's work is quite interesting in many regards but one that i wish to draw attention to today is his constant pushing against painting's tendency to represent its subjects realistically inspired by the impressionist and post-impressionist painters who had sought new ways to paint reality before him matisse would devise his own painting methods that went even further in a search for what he termed an art of balance purity and serenity this search would lead matisse to create bright and colorful works that over the course of his career would push the boundaries of representation further than ever before in a search for a deeper sense of beauty that he believed art could uncover in the world around us today we're going to discuss the artworks processes and ideas of matisse to try and understand what his art was all about we'll discuss his development as an artist the ideas and methods behind his work and the impact they had not just for modern art but for our contemporary visual culture as well matisse born in 1869 was the son of a grain merchant and he enjoyed a relatively middle-class upbringing in his hometown of la cato cambrisi in the north of france he initially street law but found a new calling when his mother bought him some art supplies to pass the time while he recovered from about appendicitis at the age of 20. having no previous experience with art he was surprised to find great enjoyment in painting and the following year he made the brave and perhaps foolhardy decision to refocus his education away from law and towards his newfound interest it wasn't quite that easy to just jump up and declare herself an artist however having no prior experience or training to speak of put him at a bit of a disadvantage though he was not deterred his first step would be finding a teacher in the seemingly eternal capital of the art world paris paris at this time was a bit of a melting pot of artistic styles and movements the inroads made by the impressionist and post-impressionist painters had finally relaxed the grip of the academies in response a myriad of new styles were emerging side by side in the sea this multiplicity would benefit matisse greatly as he arrived in the parisian art scene as something of a provincial uneducated in the various ins and outs of the art world his painting up to this point had been focused on mimicking reproductions of 17th century dutch oil paintings quite far from the works you've become known for this initial interest in realism brought him to the studio of william adolf bujero it was pretty much the final form of academic painting made flesh boudreau's teaching style stressed the traditional academic approach of drawing from casts and rigorous adherence to his technical standards as you can imagine he and matisse did not get on too well and after a brief period of torturous study under the arch academician matisse left in search of a tour who was a bit more his speed after leaving the studio of bujero matisse would go on to take evening classes under another established artist the symbolist painter gustav moreau whose unique teaching style focused on nurturing the voice of the individual student rather than beating them into submission with plaster cast studies moro's teaching would be foundational for matisse as it gave him the confidence to develop his interest in colour as well as his inclination to experiment with more modern approaches another figure who helped the young matisse during this period was the ever-helpful impressionist camille pizzero pizarro turned mateus's attention to neo-impressionism a style which relied on the science of color theory neo-impressionist artists like george serra and paul signiak used this rigorous style to create unique optical effects in the viewer's eye through tiny dots of unmixed color matisse would learn much from this method even painting alongside signak in this style for a time matisse benefited greatly from all of these teachers and peers but there is one more figure we should mention who was pivotal to matisse's development as he is to all modern art the proto-modernist post-impressionist paul suzanne as a young man matisse had purchased suzanne's three bathers from the dealer ambrose velard a purchase he could ill afford but one that turned out to be wise he held on to it for about 37 years claiming that it sustained him during the most turbulent moments of his career from suzanne matisse would learn many things such as the way color can lend paintings a kind of structure suzanne had constructed his works out of blocks of colors and tones placed adjacent to one another he analyzed his subjects and sought new ways of painting them that went beyond the conventional academic approach this would inspire matisse to devise his own ways of seeing his subjects just as suzanne had matisse did not however become a mere imitator of suzanne he would instead begin to develop a series of ideas that would advance what suzanne had begun this process would take him some time however and in those interceding years he would suffer much hardship and doubt in 1904 he held his first solo show at the gallery of ambrose villard after years of material hardship and hard work to get there the response to this show was underwhelming it made little impression and didn't really bring matisse the recognition he had hoped for that recognition however was not fair off as just one year later he would find himself part of an unusual group of artists accepted to the autumn salon show the works they exhibited there were bright and colorful and a synthesis of many of the ideas matisse picked up in paris though it wasn't exactly to everyone's taste with one critic famously terming these works a pot of paint flung in the face of the public the works which caused this dramatic reaction were part of what we now termed the fovist movement well i say movement that's a bit of a stretch fovism was pretty informal as far as movements go there was no cafe discussions allah impressionism nor any of the grand manifesto writing that we'll see later with things like dada and futurism the falvous movement in addition to barely being a movement was also quite short-lived existing really only for a couple of shows in 1905 and 1906 when many artists painting in a similar style were admitted to the salon exhibitions most of those who participated were only really passing through on their way elsewhere among them andrei durane who alongside matisse was considered the leader of the style and maurice de flamenck pro cyclist turned painter who famously said he painted with his hair and his loins though i'd say he'd have been better off using a brush also among the fovest ranks was a young george brack pre-cubist and once again working in the shadow of a larger historic figure of all of them matisse was perhaps the most committed to the style as many of the qualities of fauvism fit quite well with his own rapidly developing ideas about art those qualities of fauvism emerged from the inspiration matisse's contemporaries found in the works of many modern painters who had come before them including suzanne van gogh and the neo impressionists it was the fusion of these painters ideas regarding colour visible brushwork and the nature of observation that would inspire them to create these often messy brightly colored works which seemed to explode off the canvas their unruly appearance led the critic louis vauxelle to coin the term fov french for wild beast in reference to their creators this might seem a little melodramatic to us today especially in reference to matisse who seems to have dressed like he was permanently on his way to a job interview but to people at the time who were not used to such strong and unnatural colours these works must have seemed beastly indeed a signature of the fovus style was the separation of colour from subject rather than colour being dictated by the subject's surface appearance it was instead chosen according to what the artist felt would best suit their composition this allowed fove's painters to pick and choose without restraint and freed the element of colour from the need to represent reality allowing for it to be used in the most eye-catching manners possible another characteristic of the style and a knock-on effect of this loosening of colour was a flattening of the surface without carefully modulated tones of light and dark fova's paintings continued the trend of rejecting the illusion of three-dimensional space and embracing the actuality of the canvas's flat surface this would in turn allow the painter to place more emphasis on their composition further unifying the elements of painting under this new approach one more trait of fauvism and one which is a little less wild on the rest of it is its subject matter which remains rooted in traditional subjects they may have been beasts but they weren't mad foes paintings still depict common subjects such as people landscapes animals and nature they may no longer be quite as real looking but it's important to note they're still rooted in observing nature even if it is in a more loose and expressive fashion the result of this shifting of concerns was the creation of room for the artist to express themselves expression of the artist's feelings regarding their subject expression through the interaction of color shape space and line this was the reason matisse and his mates had abandoned realism and apparent good taste they sacrificed the surface appearance of reality in order to find a way to express a deeper and surpassing sense of beauty which was to be found in colour work and composition as far as examples of the movement go mathis's portrait woman with a hat is fairly emblematic so let's take a look at that to see some of those beastly traits in action the painting subject matisse's then y family was not so much the cause for concern as with most fovus works it's a fairly standard subject for a painting in this case a portrait of a well-to-do woman in her finery not a million miles away from renoir's portraits of the new wealthy urban classes from a few decades before the controversial part is of course not the subject but the way she was painted the work surface is composed of a patchwork of bright colours brushed onto the canvas with apparent speed and excitement worse than that in between the cacophony of colors there are bare patches of empty canvas which matisse seemingly hasn't painted at all as a painter you have one job covering things in paint and yet here's this matisse fella just flat out refusing to do so despite the outrage such sketchy painting would provoke matisse did have good reasons for doing this which are of course in line with the fovus style he has used a free assortment of colors across the surface that while obviously unnatural are balanced against one another the greens play against the reds and the light purple on the right hand side plays against a small patch of yellow on the other side of emily's face this play of complementary colors lends structure to the work there is also the selection of tones he has used the darker blacks and blues of emily's hat and dress pop against the light background and make sense of those light patches of unpainted canvas the strong contrast they create adds dynamism to the work which further builds that explosive quality of the fovus style in tandem with the excitable brushwork emily herself might be painted roughly but not unrecognizably so her hat dress and fan are all social indicators of her status as a bourgeois woman which creates tension between that knowledge and the wild painting style the patchwork of colors matisse is used to sculpt the planes of her face may not be realistic but they are indicative of the form and even a sense of light blue and green shadows and orange highlights give us some sense of directional light in the otherwise colorful void of this composition which further gives us the sense that this is observed rather than a totally fictional composition finally the blocking and placement of the figure along with the curves created by her arm and the fan lend further structure to this otherwise chaotic canvas it may seem sketchy and rough at first glance but at a closer inspection it reveals the careful hand of matisse at work he may want to appear as a wild beast but behind it all is a careful analytic disposition that is enjoying the process of painting and perhaps the pageantry of the falva's style this portrait garnered a lot of controversy even in comparison to other falvas works which ended up working out well for matisse who despite his misgivings received an unexpected boon when the work was bought by the american novelist and art collector gertrude steen gertrude and her brother leo were avid collectors of modern art and their patronage would be decisive in the careers of many prominent artists of the time despite leo referring to a woman with a hat as the ugliest smear of paint he had ever seen their art collector instincts ended up paying off and the purchase marks the beginning of a long relationship with matisse that propelled the artist to the next stage of his career before we go on let's take a moment to comment on a new trend that the steens were getting in on the advent of the art collector we've already seen the kind of major impact art dealers like ambrose villard and paul duran roel had on the development of earth this trend was to further mutate as the 20th century went on the steins were among a new wave of private art collectors who were characterized by two factors being culturally literate and rich as chrosius as a result the steins would have a huge impact on the development of modern art by funding many of the figures we know today among them matisse and picasso this trend of the rich a class not traditionally known for their good taste or restraint getting involved in the arts is interesting over time it would come to replace the old systems of state and church patronage that had funded the arts before and eventually give birth to the nightmarish hellscape that we now call the art market it was also thanks to the scenes that matisse would be introduced to many other contemporary artists and collectors including pablo picasso these two men were to become the dominant figures of art in the first half of the 20th century despite matisse's apparent initial dislike for the blowhard spaniard the talent that each saw on the other would feel something that approximated a lifelong friendship and artistic rivalry in those next few years matisse would rise to prominence now financially secure and growing more confident he will produce many of his most well-known works which were increasingly bold in their experimentation with colour space and line with this increased fame came increased scrutiny of course matisse felt the need to confront his critics and explain some of ideas in a statement he published in 1908 entitled notes of a painter which we're going to take a look at before we get into some of the more mature matisse works as it's a pretty useful text to help us understand how he consolidated all those influences from his early days and how they were incorporated into his ever developing ideas of a new modern art matisse begins his statement by saying that he is interested in what he describes as expression he says expression does not lie as we might think initially solely in the human face or in some dramatic motion but rather is present in every aspect of an image from its figures to the space around them to their proportions although this contains an expressive quality as well figuring out how and what to express leads to the creation of a composition which matisse defines as the decorative arrangement of the elements at the painters command to express his feelings on his subject as such every part of the picture has its role to play and from this it follows that any superfluous elements in a work should be removed as they add nothing helpful and may even distract the viewer from more vital parts of the composition matisse also describes his working methods and how they have developed he says that when he starts working on a picture the first thing he does is record his superficial sensations of the subject a first impression if you will he notes that when he started this would sometimes have been enough to satisfy him but as he has come to see more as he puts it this first impression is no longer sufficient to convey what he sees and feels about his subjects he says that at first he could not stand to look back at old works which seemed to him to be created in embarrassing states of over excitement and notes that this was a mistake what he has come to do instead is to look more closely at his works on his subjects in search of what he terms a condensation of sensations which is an interesting way to put it what he means by this is that rather than being satisfied with that first superficial impression he instead pushes past it reworking his painting again and again until those first excited sensations are condensed into what he describes as a more serene and broader composition to illustrate what he means by this he gives the example of drawing a female figure his first instincts will be to imbue the drawing with grace and charm as he puts it this first impression however is not enough he then seeks to condense his sensations of the figure by seeking out the essential lines that define it he notes this reworking process may diminish the charm of that first approach but this is only because the charm is no longer the only concern it still exists but it is now situated within a broader sense of the subject one that he has condensed from that first sensation matisse's example of a female figure also demonstrates that his favorite subject is people as the human form allows him to express what he describes as his almost religious awe towards life the human form for matisse contains endless steps to explore for expressive qualities matisse says that he can uncover deeper and essential qualities that go beyond the likeness of a face or the structure of anatomy to find a deeper sense of beauty now matisse's refusal to settle on the first impression contrasts significantly with the entire movement based around doing pretty much just that impressionism rather than focusing on the moment-to-moment existence of things like impressionism does matiste claims that the artist should look for an underlying reality a truth that exists behind all of those fleeting impressions which the artist can seize upon he gives us the example of motion to illustrate the difference between his work and the impressionist approach when we see a frozen snapshot of a figure in motion that particular contortion of muscles and tension is meaningless to us without the understanding of where the motion came from and where it is going with that knowledge however the moment shown condenses and thus contains an expression of the entire motion so it is with his work which seeks to condense the aspects of his subject into an image which expresses an underlying truth in contrast to impressionism's obsession with a single disconnected moment having described his concepts matisse then gets into some of the mechanics of painting and creating compositions he says for example that if he puts a black dot on a white sheet that dot is clearly visible from anywhere if he then puts a second and a third dot the first mark loses clarity and becomes a bit lost in order for that first dot to maintain its clarity it must be altered in some way made larger or more noticeable or else it risks becoming lost he then expands this concept into the realm of colour where he says that as he sets down strokes of different hues each new one will diminish the importance of the previous one a red by itself is quite strong but place a green and a yellow next to it and that initial red quickly loses its power to avoid this weakening it becomes necessary for matisse to rework his images balancing the tones and colors carefully so they do not weaken but instead reinforce one another this is where the condensation that he described before happens it emerges from this process of reworking and balancing matisse likens the outcome to a musical composition in the way that it must produce a harmonious balancing of the elements just as a piece of music must harmoniously balance its own tones matisse also states that when it comes to color its chief goal should be as with everything else in the painting in service of expression rather than mimicking reality as such he chooses his colours by the sensations they evoke in him rather than their representative qualities he doesn't rely on culler theory too much either having once been a follower of colour theory-dependent styles like neo-impressionism he now finds the various rules and dictums of culinary too limiting instead he only considers a work complete when all of the pirates have found their balance in relation to all of the others not when it complies to any standards of arbitrary color theories having covered all of this we arrive at the big one the matisse quote that all accounts of the man are required by international law to mention the whole art of balance purity and serenity thing i hope that what we've covered so far will make this a little bit clearer but just to be safe let's go over it just a bit more matisse wants to create an air of balance purity and serenity which as we have seen means establishing harmonious relationships between his painterly elements and foregoing initial appearances in pursuit of a deeper expression of his subjects the process of reworking and harmonizing is where he finds balance the purity he speaks of come from his refinement of his observations pairing back his first impression into a composition that expresses his feelings and ideas in as clear a manner as possible while also removing any excesses that might confuse us along the way the serenity part refers to his preference for relaxing subject matter no edgy goya style monstrosities for matisse they must be soothing as matisse's goal is to provide a kind of art which we'll be relaxing for as he puts it the mental worker for the businessman as well as the man of letters for these people matisse hopes his artwork will become something akin to a good armchair a comfy and relaxing spot that lets the mentally fatigued man of learning unwind matisse is conceiving his air as a mental one which has appeal first and foremost to educated men with refined tastes though the quote betrays a bit more than he probably intended it to the crafty git has singled out two kinds of people the businessman and the man of letters as his audience a wise move as these people typically have a lot of time and money to waste on ponderous things like artworks considering also that his social circle at the time thanks to the steens was composed of folks like f scott fitzgerald and ernest hemingway it's not surprising that he would think of his art as being for their benefit what his art is meant to mean to the man of no letters or a little business he is less forthcoming about matisse now established as a big deal in the art world would like picasso go through many periods in the rest of his life but his overall goal of achieving an air of balance purity and serenity would remain the same with these ideas in mind let's take a look at an example of his work from around the same time as the statement was written we've mentioned his proclivity for expressive figures and many of the works from this time showed us off the one i want to draw your attention to is a diptych a set of two paintings which he was commissioned to paint by the russian businessman and art collector sergey suchkin these two works known simply as dance and music demonstrate many of the traits of matisse's painting he outlined in his notes and furthermore becomes some of the most well-known examples of modern art in history such kim was an interesting chap the son of a self-made millionaire industrialist he collected art much like the steens with a focus on the new modern styles which appealed to him and he owned works by suzanne monet gauguin and van gogh it was under commission from zucchin that matisse undertook work on these two paintings which would become an important milestone in his career the idea for dance came from a previous and also well-loved matisse work the joy of life which depicts various figures in the process of well enjoying life nestled in amongst the paintings beautiful gogan colors is a circle of dancers that matisse would return to as a subject for this new work he first created a mock-up of sorts working out his composition and methods with the goal of conveying his subject in a manner that he intended to seem effortless to the viewer this aspect is pretty important as it explains questions that many will no doubt have which is why does it look so basic imagine for a moment if you will that this work was as well rendered as a work by say boudreau or david while it would no doubt look a lot more realistic it's doubtful that it would feel as fluid as matisse intended the key to this feeling for matisse was making it look like the painting itself was effortless and natural as if it had spontaneously formed on the canvas appearing out of nowhere as feelings of joy or the rhythm of dance often do themselves to achieve this sense of natural ease he created this first version now referred to as dance1 in full scale using oil paints which was unusual for preparatory work but also allowed him to plan and control every aspect of the final version the difference between it and the version such king got is illustrative of matisse's process of looking and reworking and the kind of results it could produce the second version of dance keeps the aspects of simplicity and rhythm but there's been some changes to the colors and the figures that drastically alter the tone unlike the soft amorphous forms of the dancers before these figures have harsher angles traces of outlines that denote a strength of form not present in dance one then there is the colour the rusted red that the figures are soaked in creates a very different feeling to the soft pink flesh tones of before these figures seem somehow more primitive and tribal we can almost hear the chanting and drumbeats of ritual that the movements imply the refinement of the concept has uncovered something different in the concept of dance something ancient and ritualistic as if we are seeing the genesis of the act itself matisse's ultra simple painting style has exposed this expressive quality in a way that more realistic methods would struggle to depict just as with the fauvist works dance also makes use of ultra saturated tones that pretty much tell color theory to take a hike rather than toning down areas or making safer choices matisse instead balances the painting's harmony on a knife's edge with three competing tones of overpowering colour that he has somehow wrangled into our harmony that evokes a primal creative instinct without rendering the viewer blind this is that sense of balance at work again the space of the work as well is deliberately confused firstly the background is comprised of two planes of blue and green with no other distinguishing features this serves a few purposes it evokes the idea of virginity through its untwitched quality thus making the act of dancing seem more like a kind of origin point the bare basic approach also speaks of the purity matisse saw in his works only showing what is needed and omitting all else it also has a bit of fun confusing the space the green seems to be a hilltop or field of some kind but the blue could be either sky above or water below mantis has deliberately done this to question the illusion of 3d space as was the style at the time the painting is not however totally flat the lack of competing detail draws our attention to the one area where there is a sense of depth and movement the dance itself the rhythmic distribution of the figures seems to swirl across the canvas coming towards us and then receding away at the point which seems closest to us matisse has also carefully placed the one break in the circle of dancers conveniently layered over the dancer behinds legs so as to not disrupt the color this gap can be read as a sort of invitation from matisse to the viewer to join in the dance themselves plural music shares many of the same traits but its comparatively dour figures don't quite evoke the same excitement not even the one who was literally playing the world's smallest violin despite perhaps being overshadowed by its more extroverted sibling the pair of paintings worked together to depict the theme matisse had in mind of the primitive act of artistic creation the simple limited painting and refined compositions matisse has used to depict this subject are quite successful in this service i don't know about you but when i look at these works there is something definitely ancient and powerful about them as if matisse had found some simple archaic harmony that reaches back through the millennia to express a fundamental moment of creation such kin was needless to say pretty chuffed with them although he did have to wait some five years while matisse repeatedly repainted the blue parts until he was happy sushi sushkin later complained that while he did look great during the day at night under his new electric lights the color harmony was exceedingly different electric lights were not the only unexpected development of the time suchkin within a few short years after dance and music's commission find himself exiled and his collection seized by the revolution that swept russia which no doubt put the whole lighting situation into perspective matisse back in france would soon be confronted by a similarly historic event in the first world war matisse was by this time too old to fight though he appears to have faced great anxiety because of the war the front lines were not far from his childhood home and his elderly mother was in german-controlled territory where he could not reach her this anxiety is reflected in many of his works from the period leading up to and during the war where that trademark matisse colour seems to drain from them and greys and blacks become more pronounced the piano lesson is one of these works showing matisse's son hard at work as thankless task of piano practice to which his father condemned him for two hours every morning the most striking thing about this work is its austere dominating gray the areas of color that are present seem to recede in power and become more abstract than ever before barely even registering as objects at all but rather as geometric intrusions the boy sitting behind the piano is the most figurative thing we see and even he seems trap behind the austere blocks of black and red the wedge of black across his eye is similarly disconcerting in discussing many of these more dour works matisse talks about reappropriating black as the colour of light rather than the colour of darkness and in doing so tries to deny any depressing or non-serene connotations that may be present but i'll let you be the judge of that vader's by the river which matisse worked and reworked over the duration of the war also bears the marks of a deeply felt stress its surface is much more divided its drawing much more severe and its geometry more angular than the curvy indulgent matisse we have come to expect while it lacks the spatial aspects of cubism it's worth noting that this work doesn't look too far away from picasso's signature style which matisse supposedly rejected if not on the surface it does seem that subconsciously the stress of the war was indeed getting to him despite any stresses that may have fueled them these ever more abstract works were received well and further established matisse's reputation as a master of modern art which is exactly why the period of time following the war he spent in nice from about 1917 to 1930 confounded so many of his critics and admirers matisse had left paris for a holiday in nice and ended up enjoying it so much he stayed for about a decade enjoying the light and scenery of the southern french coast the war years have been hired and the upper class bourgeois lifestyle matisse was accustomed to in paris was more or less coming to an end as a result he may have left paris in reaction to this and the move definitely marks another turn in his work unfortunately for many of his most ardent admirers these new works produced in nice would also look like a bit of a cop-out the problem with matisse's work in nice if there even is one is that it looks a whole lot like a retreat from the modernism he had previously championed gone are the minimal details on flat planes of color of his previous work they're replaced by scenes with pattern more naturalistic spaces and my god a sense of light most of these works were painted from his hotel room and focused on interiors on the mediterranean coast as well as a slew of women he painted in a fashion reminiscent of odelisk painting matisse did say his favorite subject was the human form and during this period he certainly indulges himself these paintings were no doubt influenced by the light of the southern coast but they also bear traces of islamic art that he had seen during his trips to algeria and morocco as well as the historical connotations of odolisk painting itself half imagined dreams of harams and extra european promiscuity that painters from delaqua to picasso loved so much this perceived retreat from modernism coupled with the more indulgent aspects of his work in this period have led to a bit of conflict regarding whether or not any of it is any good or was matisse just resting on his laurels rather than striving endlessly for new modernist plateaus some have argued this work can be dismissed as tawdry self-indulgent nonsense others have claimed to be a brilliant synthesis of his earlier advances and the impressionist love of light robert hughes with an interesting take as usual characterizes it as matisse seeking an artistic connection to an area that had long played host to other great artists like suzanne and corbett with matisse seeking to do for the southern coast what they had done for its countryside this period could even be considered to be part of the so-called return to order a trend of more avant-garde artists returning to a more traditional manner of production in a perhaps psychological response to the horrors of the first world war something that affected many painters at the time including picasso whatever may be said about these works and their perceived problems or lack thereof they are in themselves often quite beautiful show many of the traits we have come to see across matisse's career his love of line and color is now enriched with detailed pattern and his expressive figures contain more of a sense of flowing weight than ever before that sense of serenity that he saw is also present something that was perhaps missing from those wartime works of the previous years matisse would work more or less uninterrupted in nice for many years and his reputation would continue to grow during this time he painted made sculptures and continues to draw amassing an enormous body of work at the outbreak of the second world war however matisse's comfortable life in nice was brought to an end by allied bombing raids which forced him to evacuate to a villa near vents world war ii was harder on metis psychologically than the first one had been his daughter marguerite a communist and a member of the french resistance was captured by the gestapo she was tortured though managed to escape thanks to a stroke of luck matisse was distraught at this but he soon had other problems he was diagnosed with cancer and had to undergo a risky operation to survive while he did recover complications from surgery would leave him bedridden for the rest of his life this physical difficulty prompted in him a change of working habits that would bring about the final chapter of his artistic career and perhaps his best work despite or perhaps because of his new limitations he would discover new ways of working that would at long last unify his love of color and line the process that led him to the synthesis had begun unsuspectingly in the 30s some years before his illness once again working under the commission of a ludicrously wealthy patron which must have been very mundane for him at this stage matisse was asked to design a large mural and in a very 20th century sort of twist it was to be a sequel a sequel in this case the such king's famous commission the dance dance two dance harder if you will the ludicrously wealthy individual this time was one dr albert barnes an eccentric collector of all things modern who had amassed a huge collection featuring works by everyone from suzanne to van gogh to monet to renoir it's an amazing collection which baron's hung almost on top of each other in his own home with all the restraint of a drunken interior designer to top it all off barnes wished to commission a huge mural from the great matisse himself it was during the planning process for this mural when matisse made a small measurement error seemingly unnoticeable in the plants when transferred to the large arch surface prepared for it the discrepancy translated into a major error that required matisse to quite literally go back to the drawing board this miscalculation would lead him to discover a simpler method for composing pictures than drawing and scaling them up if he were to instead use cut out sheets of paper at the same scale as his intended final piece he could move them at will to create and refine the shapes of his composition with this method the mural was quickly completed this cut out method would be revelatory for matisse and later when he was confined to his bed he would revisit it as a way to continue working when he could no longer paint or draw in the manner he was accustomed to the process was of course not really anything new collage as we call today is the simple act of cutting and sticking paper to create an image beloved by children and hated by adults who have to clean up afterwards collage had come into popularity in paris in the early 20th century the proliferation of cheap printed materials for posters advertising and newspapers created an abundance of material for financially challenged artists of the day picasso and had both experimented with it and as had marcel duchamp now it was matisse's turn to try his hand at it aided by his assistants who would paint sheets of paper with gouache paint matisse would cut shapes with a large scissors from the sheets and lay them on top of each other to create compositions this process would almost replace drawing for him as he saw as a new way of doing exactly the same thing rather than drawing the shape and filling it with colour he was now drawing by cutting straight into color itself in this way he arrived at a working method that synthesized his love of drawing and painting into one unified approach these works show a joy and inquisitiveness that most people have beat out with them at an early age the fact that matisse created them as a bed-ridden man at the end of his life should tell us something of the joy he took from his work and the endless inquisitiveness that he possessed these works are among his most beloved and it's not hard to see why they display many of the same concerns for expression balance and harmony that he had pursued throughout his career one color carefully placed next to another one shape balanced with a counterpoint the process of cutting and arranging these shapes allowed matisse to focus all of his attempt on finding those simple formal balances that he always enjoyed one well-known example of these cut-out works is the snail completed in 1953 just a year before matisse's death surprisingly huge if you've ever seen it in real life this work is about three meters tall and was completed by matisse cutting sheets and his assistants lightly pinning them in place under his directions so exacting were his instructions that when the work was sent to be mounted by the framers an accurate tracing was made so as to not move any of the parts even a millimeter from where matisse had intended a further demonstration of his belief in the utmost importance of composition now i know what you're thinking a snail really that doesn't look like any snail i've ever seen without the aid of hallucinogenic substances it looks very abstract you might say well while there were plenty of actual abstract painters running around by the time this was made matisse was not one of them and even this gargantuan work was not exactly abstract instead it came from observations of nature as matisse's work always had the inspiration for the sale came from a series of drawings matisse made of actual snails which he held in one hand and drew with the other from these studies he became aware of the geometry present in the swirl of the snail's shell this naturally occurring spiral became his inspiration and the result is what we see in the cutout matisse translated the swirling shapes of the shell into a swirl of colours playing one complementary off another and building a compositional spiral that once again demonstrates his need for balance in his work as well as his love of nature the cutouts represent the last stage of matisse's career and in many ways an accumulation of the ideas he had dealt with along the way allowing him to create formally balanced works that really do evoke a kind of serenity in how simple and effortless they appear matisse's goal of an air of balance purity and serenity seems to be realized in these later works and in the cut-out in particular but as we have seen many of these ideas were present in his works all along it just took nearly a lifetime of practice to really get there the result was a kind of art that privileged the joy of colour and simple graceful line over polished surfaces and realistic depictions and in doing so made more room for the artists to express themselves and more room for a variety of different approaches to painting the world around us in doing so matisse opened the way for artists who came after him to push further away from any kind of traditional representation and fully embrace the possibilities presented by colour shape and line alone to uncover that deeper sense of beauty he had saw all along matisse's work is of great importance to not only modern art but also to our wider visual culture as well the language of simplified shapes and colours that he pioneered has been widely adopted from corporate logos to the language of graphic design and illustration which comprises so much of the media and advertising we are bombarded with daily consider if you will the design of any advert or logo from the start of the 20th century in comparison to their modern equivalents the influence of matisse is palpable as pretty much across the board we see less detail and more communicable shapes and colours become the norm while there are many reasons for the change in design sensibilities over the last century or so it's hard to imagine much of our modern visual landscape without matisse's initial experiments proving the visual efficacy of simplified color and shape in communicating complex ideas matisse's simple and colorful style lends itself well to the hyper-fast world of modern visual culture where a million images at any one time are competing for our attention what matisse himself would have taught about this god only knows while the traces of his fingerprints are all over our visual culture it certainly doesn't seem to be very balanced pure or serene most of the time and yet this is a great example of the kind of impact art can have on the day-to-day world around us before we go too far into the complexities of modern visual culture there are many more outcomes from the work of matisse that were contemporary to his own day and which we should also explore the one i have in mind being that expressive quality he kept banging on about which many other artists at the time had also noticed and which would soon lead to another set of artists and movements that we'll be discussing in further detail next time so i hope you'll join me then and thanks for watching

Channel: The Arts Hole

Views: 114,167

Keywords: art, modern art, painting, abstract art, matisse, henri matisse, artist, arts hole, the arts hole, contemporary art, france, drawing, sculpture, colour, collage, education, history, art history

Id: z4jSchxv6t4

Length: 41min 52sec (2512 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 10 2020