‘What is significant is the relation of the object to the artist, to his personality, and his power to arrange his sensations and emotions.’
(Matisse, 1935)
Upstairs in the Sackler Wing of the Royal Academy, five rooms are devoted to a beautiful exploration of how Henri Matisse gathered round himself and kept in his studio a rich collection of objects and textiles which he either incorporated directly into paintings or used as inspiration for his work.
I had expected a vague exploration of ideas and themes but in fact the show is extremely practical, displaying actual objects – chairs, tables, rugs, tapestries, statuettes and masks, vases, jugs and pots, classical and non-European sculptures, which Matisse acquired over his long creative life – right next to paintings which directly represent them or are inspired by them.
What’s noticeable about this ‘group portrait’ of objects from Matisse’s studio is how many of them are pretty mundane containers – jugs and glasses and bowls and cups. An indication of the sheer number of still lifes he painted and the essentially static, tranquil nature of his art.
The Object as Actor
‘A good actor can have a part in ten different plays; an object can play a role in ten different pictures.’ (Henri Matisse)
Using this quote we can interpret Matisse as a director who conceives of the objects in his studio as actors to be cast in different ‘roles’, according to the requirements of different compositions. Among these object-actors the exhibition includes a chocolate pot, a striking antique Venetian chair, and a small exquisitely painted table, plus other objects Matisse owned. All of them are positioned alongside Matisse paintings which incorporate them. Here’s the table:
and here’s the painting, Yellow Odalisque, which it appears in.
Matisse was given this coffee pot, sometimes used for making chocolate, by a friend on the occasion of his marriage in 1898:
Cafetière en argent, France, début du xixe siècle, chocolatière, argent, poignée en bois teinté. Musée Matisse Nice
It plays a starring ‘role in numerous Matisse pictures:
The nearly 40 years which separate these two works show the enormous distance he travelled from an essentially realistic to an essentially decorative art. His marriage had broken up a few months before the 1940 work was painted. Is the inclusion of the chocolate pot a sad memento of a much earlier, happier period? And the fierce black of the table top an indication of his mood? A glass vase:
Vase, Andalusia, Spain, early 20th century. Musee Matisse, Nice. Photo © Francois Fernadez, Nice
A painting incorporating the glass vase:
Safrano Roses at the Window (1925) by Henri Matisse © Succession H. Matisse/DACS 2017
Something not mentioned in the catalogue is the way a lot of these containers and receptacles may well be actors which are posed in different sets and compositions; but they also wear different costumes in each role – in the sense that they contain different things in different pictures. Admittedly, these are mostly flowers, but still, the objects are most brought to life when set off against or containing other, organic, flowing and brightly coloured objects (flowers). They are always co-stars.
African art
Two rooms focused on the importance of African art – first bodies, then faces. Matisse acquired his first African artefact in the autumn of 1906 and by 1908 owned some 20 African masks and figurines. (He showed them to his frenemy Pablo Picasso, who also began incorporating them into his work.)
The wall panels inform us that the African artefacts helped Matisse to escape from the traditional Western way of seeing the human figure – not just for the sake of it but because these strangely shaped objects from a far distant culture revealed a completely new reality and a wholly new route to achieving emotional authenticity.
Maybe the entire Modernist movement in art can be summarised here, in this gesture – Emotional impact entirely supersedes figurative accuracy.
I love African art. I love its strong lines, its clarity and definition and solidity. Maybe my favourite works in the entire British Museum are the wonderful Benin bronzes. So I was quite thrilled enough just to enjoy looking at, sizing and weighing in my mind, the wonderfully strange angles, the shiny black wooden surfaces, the uncanny perfectness of the dozen or so African statuettes on display.
Jomooniw male and female figures, Bamana region, Mali, 19th to early 20th century. Private collection. Photograph by Robert Monnier
Matisse thought they revealed some ‘truer, more essential character’ lying beneath the superficial surface of things. It was the Edwardian period, after all, when most men and women dressed and behaved with what we would now find unbearable formality. Matisse admired ‘the jutting forms’ and ‘abrupt transition between body parts’. Instead of the lulling smoothness and sensuality of Greek sculpture, these African figurines seem energised and dynamic. New jagged visual rhythms.
The show sets his African collection against the Matisse paintings and sculptures which drew inspiration from their jagged, non-European, unsmoothness. Their ungainliness, squatness, their voodoo blankness and tremendous visual power. Hence paintings like:
Or sculptures like Two women which, while not slavishly copying the African work, clearly use them as a doorway into a chunky, elemental way of handling the human form which is walking away from the Greek and Roman tradition. (To be honest, I much prefer the African originals. Matisse seems to me to be on the way somewhere, whereas the African figurines and masks seem to me beautifully finished embodiments of their traditions and cultures.)
Two Women (1908) by Henri Matisse © Succession H. Matisse/DACS 2017.Photograph by Lee Stalsworth
The portrait
The next room is about ‘the portrait’ and features more African works, specifically a selection of wonderful tribal masks. The commentary points out that Matisse was attracted to the inscrutability of these African masks – they betray no emotions or feelings. This supported Matisse’s feeling that the emotional impact of a work comes not from overt expressions on the faces of his sitters, but from the composition, from the lines and shapes, and from the use of intense colouring.
Muyombo mask, Pende region, Democratic Republic of the Congo, 19th to early 20th century. Photograph by Jean-Louis Losi
The walls of the exhibition are dotted with quotes from the great man and one stood out for me, where he describes the way these tribal masks bring out
‘the deep gravity that persists in every human being.’
We take other people (and ourselves) so much for granted. Yet we are each as deep and complex and mysterious as the universe. From the deep impassivity of the masks Matisse drew the feeling to create works like:
You can quite literally see how these numerous objects from alien cultures helped Matisse to escape from the Western tradition, to break free, to formulate a new language, using design and colour to express new moods and feelings.
- Mboom mask, Kuba kingdom, Democratic Republic of the Congo, 19th to early 20th century
- Head of Jeannette V (modelled 1913, cast 1954) by Henri Matisse
It’s not all African by any means. On another wall is a fragment of a Roman statue of a body, placed next to some of the cutouts from Matisse’s classic collection, Jazz.
The studio as theatre
This little room is the only one that actually feels a bit like a studio, containing as it does a wide variety of artefacts from the Islamic world covering the walls, as well as a huge photograph of Matisse in his fabric-festooned studio with model in ‘exotic’ dress.
Photograph of Matisse painting the model Zita at 1 Place Charles-Félix, Nice, 1928
Matisse relocated from Paris to Nice at the end of the Great War and began collecting items from the French colonies of Algeria (which he visited in 1906) and Morocco across the sea in North Africa. This room displays a Moorish tray, table and a big screen which he owned. A haiti is a traditional perforated wall hanging. Matisse owned several.
Haiti, North Africa, late 19th to early 20th century. Private collection, on loan to Musee Matisse, Nice. Photo © Francois Fernandez, Nice
And next to it hang several examples of the innumerable odalisques he painted during the 1920s, showing how he incorporated rugs, tapestries, the tables and so on directly into the compositions.
The Moorish Screen (1921) by Henri Matisse. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Bequest of Lisa Norris Elkins, 1950. Photo © Philadelphia Museum of Art/Art Resource, NY.
The commentary points out that, for the previous hundred years or so, the genre of the ‘odalisque’ depicted young women in Eastern harems with an emphasis on their sensual if not sexual quality. What is noticeable in the numerous odalisques Matisse painted is the complete absence of sensuality; instead, they are opportunities for semi-abstract exercises in pattern, design and colour.
Naked they may be, and their pink nipples and black eyes stand out, sometimes – but by and large it is the soft furnishings which are the stars of these paintings. The faces, in particular, are constructed with the minimum of lines and colour, almost like abstract masks.
The Language of Signs
In 1941, Matisse was diagnosed with duodenal cancer. The surgery was successful but led to serious complications which nearly killed him. Bedridden for three months, Matisse developed a new art form using coloured paper and scissors.
This final room is full of the big bright bold abstract cutouts and designs Matisse created in his final period, which he himself described as his ‘second life’. Possibly this is the most impressive and simply beautiful room in the exhibition. Again Matisse put it well when he said:
‘There is no principal feature, only the pattern is important.’ (1935)
In this photo you can see Matisse in bed working on a late paper cutout.
Hanging above Matisse’s bed is an impressive wooden panel of Chinese calligraphy, which his wife Amélie gave him on his 60th birthday in 1929. Well – it is hanging in this exhibition! Sentimental, but this one object more than any of the others, made me feel physically close to the great genius.
Calligraphy panel, China, 19th century, Qing dynasty. Photo © François Fernandez, Nice
And next to it hang a number of brightly coloured cutout works in which you can trace and guess its influence. The Eskimo from 1947, is made up of five separate panels made up of motifs painted with coloured gouache. Possibly the fourth panel depicts a human face, the Eskimo of the title, done in the style of one of the tribal masks, its rectangular frames and triangular wedge completely different from the biomorphic, seaweed design of the other four panels.
There are some more African works, but in a different key, this time fabrics with abstract designs and, again, paintings and works which use the motifs and patterns as inspiration for his own uniquely bright and happy, coloured cutouts. In this final room everything has become subsumed to the search for pattern and beauty.
Summary
This lovely exhibition brings together an unprecedented number of objects from Matisse’s studio to show how (in the catalogue’s words) ‘they offered points of departure to which he could return again and again, appearing and reappearing in his work in different guises and across spans of decades, reinvented afresh in each new setting.’ It is also an entertaining overview of the career and development of one of the 20th century’s greatest artists, from the earliest work here, circa 1900, to the final, wonderful, dancing cutouts of the 1950s.
Beautiful. Inspiring.
The video
Here’s Tim Marlow introducing Matisse in 60 seconds.
Related links
- Matisse in the Studio continues until 12 November 2017
Books & Boots 
Tim Harding
/ November 5, 2017Reblogged this on The Logical Place.