Chapter Sixty Six – “Meeting Matisse”

Wanting to make more use of my ArtPass, I followed up a recent suggestion, and headed to Piccadilly to visit the Royal Academy of Arts’ ‘Matisse in the Studio’ exhibition; I’d bought myself a ticket a few weeks ago, to avoid a repeat of the disappointment I had experienced when I last tried to visit an exhibition (Hosukai at the British Museum), only to find out on the door that it was fully booked. Disappointingly, my ArtPass didn’t get me a discount – strange, I thought, that the Royal Academy of Arts, of all places, didn’t accept it.

I arrived early and spent some time wandering round the Royal Academy of Chemistry, perusing their biographical display of all those who had been inspired to pursue a career in chemistry, put together as part of their 250 year anniversary. However, eventually it was time for my 11:45 timeslot for the Matisse exhibition, so I made a move to the main building. I include here a rough account of the life, works and inspiration of Henri Matisse (1869-1954), sharing something of what I learnt today. Images of the artwork can be found online no doubt, to illustrate my writing.

The exhibition started with a description of how Matisse sought inspiration not from people or landscapes, at least not primarily, but from specific objects, some quite ordinary. These objects captured his attention and affections for one reason or another. He described the objects in his paintings as akin to actors – “A good actor can have a part in ten different plays; an object can play a role in ten different pictures.”

The first such object we were introduced to was a simple chocolate pot, given to him as a wedding present, and therefore symbolising marriage. He was upfront with his wife, Amelie, before they were married, saying “I love you, but I will always love painting more”. As a result, she threw herself into his work and wholeheartedly supported him.

In 1942 Matisse acquired the object for which he had been searching for an entire year – a nineteenth century Venetian chair. This featured in works of this time, and in his ‘Rocaille Chair’ painting of 1946 it dominates the frame, with some light flowers placed akin to a buttonhole – this wasn’t just a painting of a chair, it was a portrait.

An earlier object to capture his attention was a sculpture of a reclining nude. However, in a challenge to centuries of artistic tradition, Matisse depicted the figure with a jagged, muscular profile, giving it a restless appearance, rather than a peaceful, reclining pose. With this approach, Matisse was seeking to convey a level of emotional authenticity; the idealised nude seemed increasingly hollow.

It seems appropriate to progress from the reclining nude to the female torso. A Greco-Roman fragment caused Matisse to consider part of the human body as being able to stand in for the whole, and this was subsequently featured in his works. Following on from this, Matisse attempted sculpting, creating the ‘Small Thin Torso’ of 1929-30. It is deliberately small and intimate, representing the qualities of the hand that modelled it.

In 1906, Matisse began to add African art to his collection. His ‘Standing Nude’ was painted from a photograph in a magazine at the time, and was influenced by African art, particularly the Muyombo mask from the nineteenth/twentieth century. In African art Matisse valued the integrity of the materials used as the key to expressive impact. This is illustrated by ‘Fang’, a relinquary* figure in which the original wood form is evoked in the tubular torso and neck. (*Pertaining to guarding the dead.)

Matisse admired the abstract treatment seen in African art, and he had gathered twenty figures and masks by 1908, incorporating various aspects of these figures into his nudes, rather than painting them directly, as in earlier works, such ass with his chocolate pot.

In his portraiture, looking at the human face in particular, Matisse was concerned with evoking enduring qualities – he sought to capture the identity of his subjects, conveying something of their experiences in his studio. African masks again played a large part on the styles and concepts used, Matisse incorporating such traits into his works since 1906. His portraits of his daughter Marguerite were thus influenced, going deeper than mere straightforward resemblance, but rather “suggesting the deep gravity that persists in every human being”.

Who was ‘The Italian Woman’ (1916)? Matisse painted her fifty times in less than a year. Her enigmatic presence is suggested in various mysterious details, particularly where the background of the painting appears to fold over her arm. In keeping with Matisse’s quote of deep gravity in every human being, this is seen in the simplicity of her face – a face that suggests the precariousness and determination of a young Italian immigrant during World War One.

In the African masks, and masks in general, Matisse found the true essence of a person – the bold lines and simplistic form allowed him to “depart nature to interpret nature more fully”. Subjects such as the aforementioned Italian woman were often surprised by Matisse’s lack of detail or apparent resemblance in their portraits. However by painting in less detail he was able to reveal more.

Matisse painted his daughter Marguerite in 1906-07, in a simple, abstracted form, almost childlike. Picasso, on acquiring this painting from Matisse identified this with his Mukudj mask from Gabon – both Picasso and Matisse collected African masks at the same time (circa 1907), and appreciated their artistic influence.

In 1910 Matisse discovered the pattern of the Orient, and in 1917 moved from Paris to Nice. Now his emphasis was on materials from Islamic sources, focusing on Islamic abstract design. Objects in paintings became more than just props.

In 1927-28 Matisse used bold backgrounds to challenge the classic perception that a human figure should be the focus of artwork. As such, he painted concubines with colours and figures that echoed surrounding objects, so both the background and the individual objects or people fight for the attention of the onlooker. Of these works he says that the patterns were of the utmost importance.

In ‘The Moorish Screen’ (1921), he even encourages us to look outside the confines of the canvas, if that were possible, featuring an open violin case, thus implying his presence in the room. In this work the north African ‘Haiti’ screens obscure the back corner, which would normally denote the dimensions of the room – thus causing us to think differently.

1941 heralded the start of Matisse’s ‘second life’, as he survived a near-fatal operation for stomach cancer. He may have been immobile, but he was not unproductive during these fourteen years, being influenced not only by the simplicity of African art, but also by Chinese art (which he had actually admired since a 1919 visit to the Victoria & Albert Museum).

The late 1940s and early 1950s marked the end of Matisse’s career. His final works were cut-outs, with vivid shapes being cut from brightly coloured paper in a stencilling effect. His compositions fused colour and lines with the movements of the artist’s hand.

Matisse’s later works were influenced by a Chinese calligraphy panel that he was given by his wife. The ambiguity of the characters (whether they were relief or carved) was reflected in some works, while in others he developed a language of signs – as in ‘Mimosa’ (1949-51).

The last work in the exhibition was ‘The Burning Bush’ (1951). Matisse focused on trees and plants in his final years. As before, he did not seek to accurately depict this subjects, but to show something of what they resembled figuratively – “When you draw a tree, you must feel yourself growing with it.”

So to close, Matisse’s art was less interested in the outward appearance of an object or subject. Rather he gave everything he painted great depth and significance, being emotionally connected. He used the ordinary, modest things he fell in love with to express deep ideas, making him a very pertinent artist for today in our unsettled, restless culture.