Henri Matisse: life, art, and legacy

¶ … interview with Henri Matisse, and note how the artist's ideas and goals are expressed through an analysis of one or two key works. Henri Matisse was one of the world's most well-known artists, and his long career spanned many decades. Matisse and Picasso are noted as two of the greatest artists of the 20th century, but Matisse was always a bit humble about his art and especially his origins as an artist. His ideas and goals became clear the very first time he painted, which he notes in the interview in the article by Steven C. Munson, and also in the quotes by writer Arthur C. Danto. Matisse was a free spirit, and his works illustrate the freedom and the joy he felt when he worked in his medium and created his masterpieces.

Henri Matisse did not set out to be an artist. In fact, he took up art relatively late in life compared to most artists. He was 20 years old and recuperating in a hospital from exhaustion and a hernia when he first took up oil paints and learned he loved art more than he had ever known. In an interview later he remembered, "From the moment I held the box of colors in my hand, I knew this was my life. Like an animal that plunges headlong toward what it loves, I dived in.... It was a tremendous attraction, a sort of Paradise Found, in which I was completely free, alone, at peace" (Munson 41). During his convalescence, he painted quite a bit, but did not begin to attend art school until several years later.

He attended several art schools (where instructors considered him "incapable" of learning to draw), and did not exhibit his first painting until 1897. Modeled after some of the Impressionists (such as Van Gogh) that he admired, the painting, called "The Dinner Table," was seen by some as "diseased." Matisse later mused, "people saw germs at the bottom of my decanters" (Munson 41). However, not everyone felt his paintings were odd or diseased. After viewing "The Dinner Table" Impressionist Camille Pissaro told the young painter, "Very good, my friend, you are gifted. Work, and do not listen to anything anyone tells you" (Munson 41). As Matisse and his work matured, he created what the art world dubbed "les fauves," or the "wild beasts." His work did not show natural items in the natural world, instead, he attempted to capture emotions, sensations, and the experience of his subjects, and so, very often, they took on a life of their own and looked more like caricatures rather than real subjects. He used color to startle his viewers. He said once, "We were at that point like children before nature, and we let our temperaments speak.... I spoiled everything on principle, and worked as I felt, only by color" (Munson 41). Thus, Matisse's works and his words intertwined. He became an artist known for his freedom, his color, and his vivid style.

Matisse painted numerous works, and many of them are well-known and available online or for viewing at some of the major art museums around the world. Two that are particularly interesting are "The Blue Nude," painted in 1907, and "The Red Studio" painted in 1911. Both are vivid examples of Matisse's interest in color and abstract design. "The Blue Nude" highlights a reclining woman with one arm arching over her head. Dark-haired and voluptuous, she is created in several different shades of blue and pink colors. It is quite clear she is a woman, but her shape is abstract, her feet are too large for her body and her hips and breasts are the central focus of the painting. Behind her, some green and orange palm fronds add depth to the painting.

This work is quite representative of Matisse's early works, and when compared with his later, even more modern and dramatic works, it is even quite realistic. However, it shows the artist's love of color and form, and his driving need to be different, to be free, and to create works that created emotion and understanding in the viewer. This woman is sympathetic somehow, and vulnerable, besides being an interesting and vibrant study. In another interview, Matisse once said, "I do not paint things, only the difference between things" (Danto), and this painting illustrates this idea quite well.

This woman, not because she is blue, is different somehow. There is a difference between her and "normal" women of the day. She is free, she is naked, and she is clearly at home in her surroundings, and this exemplifies his own feelings when he first knew he wanted to be a painter. He felt free, he felt at peace, and he felt joy. Those feelings are all evident in this painting, and they make the painting more interesting, more vivid, and more real to the viewer. Matisse knew this, and always wanted to draw the viewer into his work. This piece succeeds. Somehow, the viewer wants to know more about the woman after seeing this work. What is her life like? Why does she look so peaceful and yet pensive at the same time? What is the splash of blue beneath her hips? Is it her robe, discarded in a moment of passion, or is it simply Matisse's view of the shadows of light that play around her? Matisse draws the viewer in, and creates the vision of freedom that fills all his works. His subjects seem to love life, to even revel in it, and looking at his paintings somehow frees the viewer, too.

In another interview, Matisse stated, "What has been taken for boldness [in my work] was no more than the fact that anything else proved too difficult. Freedom is really the impossibility of following the same road as everybody else: freedom means taking the path your talents make you take" (Munson 41). Again, the theme of freedom is evident, and the feeling of joy that Matisse felt when he worked. In fact, his work was so important to him that one of the pieces he painted was a passionate and wholly imaginary view of his own studio. He captured his dreams on the canvas, and what he really saw as he worked in his surprisingly drab studio. The painting, called "The Red Studio," was a vivid scarlet hue, filled with minute details of the artist's own life and work. Surprisingly, however, when visitors visited the studio after viewing the painting, the found Matisse's studio was actually a drab gray color.

In "The Red Studio," Matisse's use of color, imagination, and freedom of expression are all abundantly clear. In the one-dimensional work, detailed paintings clutter the walls, giving a sense of space and yet seeming closely confined at the same time. That is one very interesting aspect of Matisse's work throughout his career. His work was all flat and one-dimensional, and yet it did not seem flat or uninteresting at all. Critic Danto continues, "In 'The Red Studio' we see a corner, but the color of the walls, which meet at right angles, is uniform, as if they stood in the same plane" (Danto). This one-dimensional quality gave a feeling of unreality to his works, but also made the subjects central to the works, and did not bother the viewer with unnecessary details that did not add depth to the works. I the painting, Matisse also depicts many of the everyday items he works with every day, such as his paints, some models and sawhorses, canvases stacked against a wall, a vase, and even a wine glass and a dinner plate with a curled up nude figure painted on its' surface. The room is a jumble of details and vivid color, but red dominates the viewer's eye and the entire work. The paintings on the wall are presumably works in progress, and they are all figures and forms that blend in harmony with the rest of the painting.

Again, the viewer feels the joy Matisse feels as he paints. There is something joyful and peaceful about this painting too. It shows where the artist works, and shows that there is disorder there, but there is also harmony and a feeling of well being. The red is vibrant and alive, and represents how the artist views his work, rather than the reality of the gray studio where he really works. One critic notes, "the color belongs to an imaginative transformation in which the appearances in the picture are disjoined from those of the real room" (Danto). This "imaginative transformation" is part of what Matisse talked about when he talked about painting the "difference between things." Here, in his studio, there is certainly juxtaposition between the still life of vase and dining utensils on the table, and the rest of his studio where his work takes place. He makes it quite clear that he "lives" in the studio, taking time to eat and drink, but working constantly, as the number of unfinished paintings on the wall show. In effect, Matisse is "at home" in his studio. He is comfortable there, and somehow, this feeling of comfort is conveyed by the painting.