Nushagak, Alaska, 1906

is exhibition explores an encounter between French modernist painter, Henri Matisse (1869–1954), and the spiritual universe of Arctic peoples. Seen through the windows of his mask-like drawings, which were modeled on photographs of Inuit and Kalaalliit people, we nd an expansive Arctic reality. Matisse’s introduction to the indigenous arts of Alaska — which came through his family — struck a deep chord in him, and resonated in his own confrontations with mortality and legacy. In this exhibition, we present the drawings and prints that Matisse generated as he explored portraits of Arctic people. ese were the result of an invitation in 1947 by his daughter, Marguerite, to illustrate a book written by her husband Georges Duthuit, titled Une fête en Cimmérie. Alaskan masks from Duthuit’s collection, as well as the books and photographs that served as source materials for Matisse, are also included. Additionally, we present a series of aquatints Matisse created and referred to as “masks” and works relating to the creation of the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence, France, all of which were made contemporaneously with the portraits of Arctic people. In parallel, this exhibition includes a comprehensive selection of dance masks from the Central Yup’ik people of Alaska, who created the masks so admired by Matisse and other artists. eir presentation here is an historic occasion. Created originally in pairs and related groups, many traditional Yup’ik masks were separated early in their collecting history. We present an unprecedented number of reunited masks and dance objects and, for the rst time, identify some of the artists who made them. We recognize them here as masters on a par with Matisse, their distant contemporary. MATISSE FAMILY AND MASKS e upheaval of World War II sparked a series of events a ecting Matisse. Art historian and writer Georges Duthuit, husband of Marguerite Matisse, was in New York on a lecture tour in 1939, and became stranded by the war’s outbreak. Duthuit was soon joined by a growing group of artists and intellectuals escaping Europe. Feeling isolated in the harsh city, they located each other and pursued a common passion, Native American art, especially that from Alaska. ese artists had previously organized exhibitions in Paris on the subject. As they wandered about New York, they encountered the impressive collections of Alaskan art in museums, and began to assemble personal collections of Native American art, which returned to France with them after the war. Installation view from the exhibition “Indian Art of the United States” January 22 - April 27, 1941, Museum of Modern Art, New York Photograph by Soichi Sunami, 1941 In the case at left are two masks collected by Georges Duthuit during the war years in New York. ey are seen here with a third matching mask. All three masks represent Iralum Yua, Spirit of the Moon-Woman. While they are expressions Mrs. Roosevelt and Fred Kabotie, Hopi painter of spirit entities, they are artistically very much like Photograph by Albert Fenn, 1941 portraits, unusual for Yup’ik masks. Seen together with Matisse’s drawings, they demonstrate the impact upon Matisse of seeing them, and their compatibility with his approach to his portraits of Arctic people. ey are among the collection of masks shown to Matisse, and this is the rst occasion these masks have returned to the United States since 1945. One of them can be seen in the 1941 installation photograph above, from the exhibition Indian Art of the United States, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. is important exhibition was attended by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who penned the Foreword to the exhibition catalogue. SOURCE MATERIALS When Georges Duthuit and Marguerite Matisse invited the artist to develop illustrations for Une fête en Cimmérie, they provided him with several books on Arctic exploration. e chief two among them, which would provide the majority of Matisse’s sources of imagery, were Knud Rasmussen’s Across Arctic America: Narrative of the Fifth ule Expedition (1927), and Kabloona, by Gontrans de Poncins (1941). First edition copies of these two volumes are exhibited in this gallery. Another important source for Matisse was lm. Like almost everyone in France at the time, Matisse certainly viewed Robert Flaherty’s lm Nanook of the North when it was rst screened in 1922. In Paris, the lm was so popular it was shown in theaters for six months continuously. In 1930, during his famous voyage to Tahiti, Matisse happened to meet Flaherty, who was there with lmmaker F. W. Murnau, shooting the lm Tabu. Matisse also met the Arctic explorer Paul-Émile Victor, Our host, Qanigaq... Photograph by Leo Hansen published in Knud who gave him a private screening of raw lm footage shot Rasmussen’s Across Arctic America: Narrative of the Fifth ule Expedition, New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1927, page 219 in East Greenland during a French expedition in 1935-35. is was later released as Les quatre du Groenland (Fred Matter, 1938). In this lm, Matisse noticed a very brief shot showing a Kalaalliit (indigenous Greenlander) woman with her hair tied in a top-knot. A number of Matisse’s drawings for Une fête en Cimmérie show this particular detail repeatedly. “MASK” PORTRAITS In the late period of his work, after 1945, Matisse stated that he no longer made portraits, but rather that he made “masks.” Matisse’s intense work on Arctic portraits for Une fête en Cimmérie would result in subsequent drawings of human subjects undergoing this nal evolution from face to mask. roughout his career, we see the process unfold. He begins with a traditionally realistic representation of what he sees. He then draws again and again, each time distilling information into ever-simpler lines, shapes, and gestures. He gradually removes all extraneous details, except for the linear traces of the subject’s face. Finally, what appears is no longer a naturalistic reection of the visible, but the bare minimum requirements for a recognizable portrait, and sometimes even less. Matisse titled these nal stages of serial drawings “masks.” It is not abstraction, per se, for Matisse retains the human subject: what the artist pursues is the spiritual and visual evidence of the person’s essence, a symbolic representation Henri Matisse at work on an ink drawing, Villa le Rêve, Vence, 1947 of its “sign”. ese images represent the transformed person, who has advanced from the terrestrial (visible here before him) to the ethereal (reborn by his drawing). e mask drawing is a metamorphosis, albeit one of material rather than mystical form. For Matisse, the spiritual journey is the drawing process itself. As he put it: “To evoke a face, all that is needed is a sign. ere is no need to impose eyes, a mouth. It is important to leave the eld open to the spectator’s reverie.” UNE FÊTE EN CIMMÉRIE Just before war broke out in Europe in 1939, Georges Duthuit came to New York on a lecture tour, and became stranded. In New York, working as a war correspondent and inspired by loneliness, he began writing a surrealistic prose poem, titled Une fête en Cimmérie (A Celebration in Cimmeria), a fantasy in which the Arctic environment and a desolate urban landscape are merged, with Inuit people and spirit masks as main characters. In 1947 he and his wife Marguerite planned to produce a series of illustrated books, each dedicated to modes of celebration and art in indigenous cultures. Marguerite felt that her father Henri Matisse would be sympathetic to the subject of Arctic people, and she invited him to see the masks that Georges Duthuit had returned to Paris with. As a result of the profound eect of this encounter, he agreed to produce three illustrations for the book Une fête en Cimmérie. Matisse was very interested in the project, as it combined several of his passions. He enjoyed making book illustrations, having completed four books in 1946, and that same year, 1947, he produced Jazz, a revolutionary book composed of paper cut-outs, the rst of a new technique and body of work which would dene the balance of his career. In addition, Matisse had always expressed an interest in ancient civilizations, foreign peoples, and masks. He considered travel to be an essential element of an artist’s education. e opportunity to learn about a people that he knew nothing about, who lived in a close relationship with nature, and who created masks, was extremely appealing to him. Marguerite and Georges Duthuit presented him with two books by famous Arctic explorers to study for inspiration, those of Knud Rasmussen and Gontran de Poncins. e portraits Matisse made were based on photographs of Arctic people from these books. Following the artist’s usual process of making numerous studies, and reworking them many times, Matisse eventually created forty-three images for the book, instead of the requested three, completing the series in 1949. Une Fête en Cimmérie was only published nearly a decade after the artist had died. It was not until 1963 that a rst edition of 130 copies, containing Matisse’s thirty-one lithographs, was published by Tériade. e following year, Mourlot would publish fty copies, supplemented by a reproduction of a 1947 aquatint on the cover, and twelve additional drawings. VENCE CHAPEL OF THE ROSARY Soon after the outbreak of the war, Matisse had been granted a visa to Brazil, but decided to remain in Villa le Rêve is situated very near the convent of the Dominican Sisters, Foyer Lacordaire, where the nuns is was the starting point for what would become Matisse’s most ambitious project, the France.

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