20th Century Modern Art Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse -- Western Tradition

HENRI MATISSE:

FAUVISM AND THE WESTERN PICTORIAL TRADITION

Henri Matisse (1869 -- 1954), a painter, draughtsman, sculptor, printmaker, designer and author, came into the world of art comparatively late in his life and made his reputation as the main exponent of Fauvism, the first avante-garde artistic movement of the 20th century. As Jacques Lassaigne points out, Matisse "never ceased probing the mystery of the creative process and applied an intelligence far above the average to discovering the origins of his art. . . (15). Thus, Matisse created images full of spontaneity with rich surface textures, lively linear patterns and boldly clashing effects based on primary colors. Also, his subject matter was varied as his painting methods, although many familiar subjects linked to Impressionism and Post-Impressionism still remained.

It is relatively simple to understand how Matisse escaped from the confines of the Impressionists, for all one has to do is view his paintings and explore with the eyes all the subtle and beautiful manifestations within his Fauvist renderings. But in regard as to why he decided to adopt the Fauvist philosophy is less understood unless one listens to the words of Matisse himself -- "What I am after, above all, is expression. . . I am unable to distinguish between the feeling I have for life and my way of expressing it. . . The whole arrangement of my picture is expressive. . . everything plays a part. Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the various elements at the painter's disposal for the expression of his feelings. . . All that is not useful. . . is detrimental" (Chipp 131-32). What Matisse is attempting to say is that whatever appears on the canvas is an expression of his inner feelings; the picture itself is not

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meant to reflect reality but is aimed at expressing his emotions through color, movement and texture, all at the expense of subject matter.

In some ways, Matisse "resembled Eugene Delacroix, particularly (through) his aspiration (for) a classical style" which often was combined "with a passionate love of risk" and "a tireless search for the new. . . (Escholier 119). In addition, Matisse and his contemporary Fauvist painters used color like never before and focused primarily on the application of vivid greens, blues and shades of orange, all applied with rapid brushstrokes. In this way, Matisse freed color from its traditional Western role as was usually associated with the Renaissance painters, such as Michelangelo and Da Vinci. In essence, through the talents and expressions of Matisse, color and emotional spontaneity became the subjects of the picture.

Of course, Henri Matisse was the most faithful of the Fauve artists and to its principles, and through his extraordinary sensitivity for color transformed these principles into one of the strongest and most influential personal expressions in modern art. Throughout his long life, his gift for combining colors in unsuspecting ways and for inventing new combinations never ceased, and although he preferred to work in two dimensions, his paintings always conveyed the idea of three dimensional space. One of his closest friends, Geroge Waldemar, once stated that Matisse "knows how to make his spaces eloquent. His lines (are) often fragmentary, but even his spaces seem to speak" (Escholier 119), meaning that Matisse used his great talent to project space on a two-dimensional canvas with startling results.

In an early painting called Le Luxe (1907-08, oil on canvas), the background of sea, hills and sky complement the three nudes figures, and despite their apparent simplicity, demonstrates Matisse's mastery of human anatomy and to some of his contemporaries outside of the Fauvist movement, such distortions and lack of detail were quite unnatural. Thus, it is easy to see that the subject matter in Le Luxe is secondary and was shaped by Matisse's feelings while in the process of composing it.

A more important painting that best expresses the principles of the Fauvist movement is his Red Room (1908-09, oil on canvas) in which he used color to express his own decorative needs. This composition consists mostly of juxtaposed vivid colors and straight lines and though the planes of this picture seem to resolve into a single flat spread, the directional lines and the variation in the strength of the colors suggest front and rear, although somewhat ambiguous. Matisse himself always believed that color must correspond with shape until the correct balance is achieved, and through this method, the sensitivity and instinct of the artist serves as the guiding principle for relaying emotions onto a canvas.