Matisse at MoMA. In Matisse received an important commission. An extremely wealthy Russian industrialist named Sergei Shchukin asked Matisse for three large scale canvases to decorate the spiral staircase of his mansion, the Trubetskoy Palace, in Moscow. Although it is full scale and in oil, Matisse did not consider it more than a preparatory sketch. Yet a comparison between the initial and final versions is instructive. Matisse borrowed the motif from the back of the painting Bonheur de Vivre , although he has removed one dancer.
In Dance I , the figures express the light pleasure and joy that was so much a part of the earlier Fauve masterpiece. The figures are drawn loosely, with almost no interior definition. They have been likened to bean bag dolls because of their formless and unrestricted movements. Matisse works very hard to make his paintings seem effortless. Imagine for a moment, that instead of this childlike style, Matisse had decided to render this figures with the frozen density of Jacques Louis David.
Would the sense of pure joy, the sense of play have been as well expressed? Matisse has done something that is actually very difficult. He has unlearned the lessons of representation so that he can create an image where form matches content. The dancers inhabit a brilliant blue and green field. But what exactly does the green represent?
What Matisse has done here, even in seemingly simple rendering, is use spatial ambiguity to explore one of the key issues in modern painting, the conflict between the illusion of depth and an acknowledgment of the flatness of the canvas.
One final point here, did you notice the break in the circle? The hands of the two front dancers are parted. Matisse has been careful to allow this break only where it overlaps the knee so as not to interrupt the continuity of the color. Why do this? The part is often interpreted in two ways, as a source of tension that requires resolution or, as an invitation to us the viewer to join in, after all, the break is at the point closest to our position.
The final version of Dance has a very different emotional character. It has been described as forbidding, menacing, tribal, ritualistic, even demonic. Drum beats almost seem to be heard as the simple pleasure of the original is overwhelmed. What causes these dramatic changes in mood? Beyond the color shift, which is pretty obvious, the figures of the canvas are drawn with more interior line, line which often suggests tension and physical power.
See for instance, the back left figure. Another more subtle change occurs where the two back figures touch the ground. This subtle change creates either a sense of lightness or a sense of weight and contributes to the way we perceive each painting. So be careful before concluding that Matisse was actually drawing like a child, he knew exactly what he was doing. This painting at The Museum of Modern Art. Speakers: Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris.
Since Manet and Degas, Monet, and Cezanne , artists have sought to undermine the illusion of space that had ruled painting since about Spatial illusion was increasingly seen as a defect that reduced the integrity of painting. But as the earlier painters of the avant-garde have shown, ridding a painting of illusion is almost impossible.
The audience is trained to expect three dimensional space and sees it given the opportunity. He meets this challenge—the destruction of spatial illusion, in three stages. Red is often thought of as the most aggressive color. This canvas was a part of a series, there is, for instance, a Pink Studio too. But that canvas was concerned with different issues. Here, the red is an attempt to find a color that is forceful enough to resist the illusion of deep space by pushing to the surface.
The red is, of course painted onto the flat canvas but actually fails to remain there visually. Instead, the red becomes the walls and furnishing of the room seen in space. Illusion triumphs—Matisse is thwarted. This triumph of illusion is due in part to the linear perspective that defines the table, chairs, and the walls and floor of the studio. But look! Matisse has constructed some of the worst linear perspective ever seen. Receding lines should converge, but look at the chair on the lower right.
The lines widen as they go back. And look to rear left corner of the room. The corner is defined by the edge of the pink canvas but above that painting, the line that must define the corner is missing! Matisse is literally dismantling the perspective of the room but it makes no difference, we still see the room as an inhabitable space.
Illusion still triumphs. Although it is very difficult to see in reproduction, if seen in person at MoMA, it is clear that the whitish lines that define form in the red field are not painted on top of the red. Instead, they are reserve lines. In other words, the white lines are actually the canvas below. Matisse painted the red planes up to the line on either side, leaving a narrow gap of white canvas in between. Stay with me on this. The white line is actually emerging from below the red.
It is beneath. The red is of course painted on top of the white canvas. Okay, now pay attention. Matisse has realized that illusion is almost certain to triumph no matter how aggressively he tries to undermine it.
We, as the audience, will see space if given the slightest opportunity. So if we see illusion at such a basic level, what hope does Matisse have of destroying it? In fact, his reserve line are his really brilliant solution. The chairs, the dresser, the clock, each object, or figure in The Red Studio is constructed out of the canvas below. At the same time, the ground which supports those figures, is constructed out of a plane of red that is physically above the canvas.
What Matisse has done then is reverse the figure ground relationship. He has made the figure out of the ground the canvas and made the ground out of the figure the red paint on top. When seen in person, the recognition of this does finally destroy illusion, Matisse triumphs! This painting at MoMA. Goldfish were introduced to Europe from East Asia in the 17th century. From around , goldfish became a recurring subject in the work of Henri Matisse.
They appear in no less than nine of his paintings, as well as in his drawings and prints. Goldfish , belongs to a series that Matisse produced between spring and early summer However, unlike the others, the focus here centers on the fish themselves. The goldfish immediately attract our attention due to their color. The bright orange strongly contrasts with the more subtle pinks and greens that surround the fish bowl and the blue-green background.
Blue and orange, as well as green and red, are complementary colors and, when placed next to one another, appear even brighter. But why was Henri Matisse so interested in goldfish? One clue may be found in his visit to Tangier, Morocco, where he stayed from the end of January until April He noted how the local population would day-dream for hours, gazing into goldfish bowls. For Matisse, the goldfish came to symbolize this tranquil state of mind and, at the same time, became evocative of a paradise lost, a subject—unlike goldfish—frequently represented in art.
Matisse was referring back to artists such as Nicolas Poussin for example, Et in Arcadia ego , and Paul Gauguin who painted during his travels to places like Tahiti. It is also likely that Matisse, who by was already familiar with the art of Islamic cultures, was interested in the meaning of gardens, water and vegetation in Islamic art—as well as symbolizing the beauty of divine creation, these were evocations of paradise.
However, Goldfish was not painted in Morocco. Henri Matisse painted it at home, in Issy-les-Moulineaux, near Paris. Matisse had moved to Issy in September to escape the pressures of Parisian life. Matisse also found the goldfish themselves visually appealing. Matisse painted Goldfish in his garden conservatory, where, like the goldfish, he was surrounded by glass. Matisse distinguished predatory observation from disinterested contemplation, the latter being his preferred approach.
Goldfish invites the viewer to indulge in the pleasure of watching the graceful movement and bright colors of the fish.
The fish are seen simultaneously from two different angles. From the front, the goldfish are portrayed in such a way that the details of their fins, eyes and mouths are immediately recognizable to the viewer. Seen from above, however, the goldfish are merely suggested by colorful brushstrokes.
Matisse paints the plants and flowers in a decorative manner. The upper section of the picture, above the fish tank, resembles a patterned wallpaper composed of flattened shapes and colors. What is more, the table-top is tilted upwards, flattening it and making it difficult for us to imagine how the goldfish and flowerpots actually manage to remain on the table. And it is clear here that although Matisse was attentive to nature, he did not imitate it but used his image of it to reassemble his own pictorial reality.
The Pushkin Museum of Art. This highly abstract painting is important because of its relation to the Cubist grid developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, because of its biographical aspects, and especially due to its thoughtful iconography symbolic content.
This large flat gray painting can be a bit confusing at first. When Henri painted this image, Pierre was actually mobilized. The painter did not know if his son would return. In a way then, this is a nostalgic image, Matisse has painted his son much younger then he actually was, perhaps recalling happier times.
A portion of his face even seems to reflect that instrument of the devil, commonly known as a metronome. Pierre sits at the piano well off to the side, trapped in the house even as the open French window a floor-to-ceiling hinged window that opens onto a wrought iron railing beckons. Finally, what is that very abstract truncated triangle of green?
Often it is interpreted as ray of sun reaching across the lawn outside. You can see why poor little Pierre is so attentive. His music teacher literally hovers above him, cold, distant, and aloof.
What a wonderful contrast to the other female figure in the painting. While the teacher represents discipline through her rigid rectilinear form, the small bronze nude at the lower left is virtually all curves. This small sculpture by Matisse is meant to represent the creative spirit while the teacher represents discipline, and like two boxers between rounds, each is in her corner. But wait! Is the teacher really there? Space is so ambiguous that it is hard to tell if there is really a distant room for her to inhabit.
In fact, there is not and she is not. Matisse has transformed the original painting in order that Raynal play the part of the strict instructor, Matisse often created variations on themes that he had already treated. So, in fact, Matisse has created a painting of a painting and a painting of a sculpture. This suggests that perhaps The Piano Lesson is not only about Pierre and his childhood experiences but more importantly, the act of creation itself.
Is Pierre actually a stand in for Henri? After all, music is a common metaphor for the visual arts. Is Matisse then saying that art is the result of both sensual creativity the sculpture and strict discipline the painting —is the metronome that swings between the two, a mediator? As you can see from the later and less abstract painting Music Lesson , Matisse has removed everything that is not essential from the canvas. So why then retain these letters? And why retain the playful swirling wrought iron fence?
According to Jack Flam, a leading Matisse scholar and an old instructor of mine and by the way, not very strict nor rectilinear , Matisse wants us to read the letters from right to left and then continue to read past the music stand by jumping to the curving iron fence which he believes to be an abstract expression or visual equivalent of the music art that is being produced.
Audio on this painting from MoMA. The term "Expressionism" first emerged as a way to classify new types of art that emphasized emotional impact over descriptive accuracy.
Imagine a painting where the magentas scream, the greens glare, and coarse brushstrokes become more ominous the longer you look at them. Like many categories in art history, Expressionism was not a name coined by artists themselves. It first emerged around as a way to classify art that shared common stylistic traits and seemed to emphasize emotional impact over descriptive accuracy. For this reason, artists like Edvard Munch straddle the line between Post-Impressionist developments in late 19th century painting and early 20th century Expressionism.
Likewise, the Fauves in France exhibited similar characteristics in their work and are often linked to Expressionism. Influenced in part by the spiritual interests of Romanticism and Symbolism , these artists moved further from the idealized figures and smooth surface of 19th century academic painting that can be seen in paintings by Lawrence Alma-Tadema , for example. Instead of depicting the visible exterior of their subjects, they sought to express profound emotional experience through their art.
For the Expressionists, these sources offered alternatives to established conventions of European art and suggested a more authentic creative impulse. Led by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, the group wanted to create a radical art that could speak to modern audiences, which they characterized as young, vital, and urban. Their work often addressed modern urban themes of alienation and anxiety, and sexually charged themes in their depictions of the female nude.
Their first exhibition was held in the showroom of a lamp factory in Dresden in for which they published a program of woodcut prints reflecting their interest in earlier traditions of German art. He proclaimed,. With faith in progress and in a new generation of creators and spectators we call together all youth. As youth, we carry the future and want to create for ourselves freedom of life and of movement against the long established older forces.
This optimism was not long-lived. Internal squabbling caused the group to dissolve in just prior to the start of the First World War. Based in the German city of Munich, the group known as Der Blaue Reiter lasted only from their first exhibition at the Galerie Thannhausen in to the outbreak of World War I in They thought these ideas could be communicated directly through formal elements of color and line, that, like music, could evoke an emotional response in the viewer.
These ideas would become more fully developed at the Bauhaus where Kandinsky taught after the war Marc died during the Battle of Verdun in In Vienna, Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele stand out for paintings that show intense, often violent feeling and for their efforts to represent deeper psychological meaning.
In the aftermath of the First World War, many artists in Germany felt that the forceful emotional style of Expressionism that had been so progressive before the war but had become less appropriate. Neue Sachlichkeit New Objectivity arose as a direct response to pre-war stylistic excess. The Blaue Reiter Guggenheim. As the artist recollected in a diary entry of 22 January I was walking along the road with two friends — the sun went down — I felt a gust of melancholy — suddenly the sky turned a bloody red.
I stopped, leaned against the railing, tired to death — as the flaming skies hung like blood and sword over the blue-black fjord and the city — My friends went on — I stood there trembling with anxiety — and I felt a vast infinite scream [tear] through nature. Munch was deeply affected by this incident and depicted it several times: first as Despair in , and then in several different versions in different media under the title The Scream.
There is even some evidence that the famous blood-red, undulating sky that Munch associated with this feeling may also have been geographically specific. It closely resembles the pattern formed by polar stratospheric clouds visible almost exclusively in Northern Europe during the winter dusk.
Even the relative warmth and bright sunshine of the French Mediterranean, evoked in this contemporary painting of Saint-Tropez by Neo-Impressionist artist Paul Signac, could not relieve Munch of the deep anxiety he remembered experiencing in the cold north. This contrast between Norway and the south of France in terms of temperament as well as temperature illustrates what was once a commonplace of cultural geography: the idea that climate significantly shapes the psychological characteristics, not just of individuals, but of whole societies.
Although this idea is currently discredited by its association with racist pseudo-science, it had widespread currency during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was commonly believed that there was a major cultural divide in Europe between the sun-filled south, associated with temperate, Classical rationality, and the cold north, which was riddled with spiritual angst and melancholy. Even today, Expressionist art is primarily associated with northern Europe.
Many Scandinavian and German Expressionist artists took great pride in their Nordic or Teutonic heritage and attempted to define and revive a distinctly Northern European artistic tradition that was fundamentally different from Mediterranean Classicism.
But in affirming the flatness of the red colour, the artist managed to create within it the impression of space, space within which the female figure bending over the vase could move and within which the sharp angled view of the chair seemed natural. The window, through which we see a green garden with flowering plants, allows the eye to move into the depths of the canvas.
L'Atelier Rouge is a brilliant celebration of pattern and decoration. The rhythms of the foliage pattern on the tablecloth and wallpaper are echoed in the background through the window, uniting the interior with the cooler exterior. All Rights Reserved. Toggle navigation Henri Matisse. Joy of Life. The balcony with flower pots on the floor is a shallow intermediate space between the room and the view of the harbor, which reaches to the horizon.
However, all of these indications of spatial depth are negated by color and paint application, which emphasize the flat surface of the canvas and fail to create a convincing illusionistic scene. We never forget that we are looking at a painting and not out a window.
The highly visible brushstrokes and areas of unpainted canvas are the most obvious way Matisse denies us the illusion of reality, but his use of color is also important. Not only is it extremely bright and flat, lacking the chiaroscuro modulations traditionally used to suggest volume and depth, it also repeatedly subverts clear differentiation of foreground and background.
For example, the distant masts of the boats in the harbor and the much closer verticals of the window frames create a surface pattern of bright orange and red verticals. The more distant reds and oranges are not muted to indicate depth through atmospheric perspective.
Similarly, the dark blue and green brushstrokes depicting the hulls of the boats are echoed by the dark blue and green paint strokes used to indicate edges of the window frames and various objects in the foreground.
A sympathetic art critic, Louis Vauxcelles, inadvertently named the group when he described the effect of their brilliantly colored paintings hanging on the walls surrounding two classicizing sculptures as being like Donatello among the fauves wild beasts. The name came to reflect the extreme public reaction to the paintings, which were widely considered disturbing and outrageous. Conservative critics mocked the paintings in the press, but the Fauve painters ultimately profited from the notoriety and found dealers, critics and collectors who supported their work.
Henri Matisse, Woman with a Hat , , oil on canvas, The use of brilliant complementary colors, prominent brushwork and seemingly unfinished areas is very similar to Open Window, Collioure , but their effect in this traditionally-composed portrait of a woman was unsettling. The crude dabs of paint, harsh simplified features, and the rendering of the shadows on the face in brilliant turquoise were all startling, even for viewers used to the painterly abbreviations and bright colors of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.
The painting looks unfinished and unresolved, with some parts painted in heavy impasto and others barely brushed in. The Salon jury tried to persuade him to retract the painting from his submission, but Matisse refused, indicating that he believed the painting to be finished and ready for exhibition.
Henri Matisse, P ortrait of Mme.
0コメント