Henri Matisse Images 3 1 2 4 5 6 8 7 c c 11 12 9 10 c c c c 14 15 13 c c c For Educational Purposes Only Revised 08/12 1 Henri Matisse The Presentation 1. Photo of Matisse Working on Paper Cutouts, Age 83 1484, silverpoint, 11” x 7-3/4”, Albertina Museum, Vienna This photo was taken shortly before Matisseʼs death. Although surgery for intestinal cancer at age 72 left him mostly confined to a wheelchair, Matisseʼs desire to create did not diminish as he dealt with the complications of age and illness. He is seen here working on pieces of cut-out paper that became his medium when he could no longer stand to paint. An assistant painted the paper with opaque watercolor (or gouache, pronounced “gwash”), and Matisse cut out shapes that the assistant helped to arrange and then glue onto large pieces of white paper. (You can see his assistant sitting next to him at the left edge of the photograph.) The collages (pasted down assemblages of cut paper) that Matisse created in the last years of his life were masterpieces of shape and bold color. 2. Woman with the Hat 1905, oil on canvas, 31-3/4” x 23-1/2”, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California In 1905, Matisse and his colleagues, including André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, and Albert Marquet, were experimenting with the expressive potential of color, and they all submitted paintings to the autumn Salon in Paris. Their paintings were not well received, and were considered “orgies of pure colors,” according to a jeering public, who considered the paintings primitive, brutal, and violent. The artists themselves were dubbed fauves (“wild beasts”), and the room in which the paintings were exhibited became le cage (“the cage”). The term fauve, actually coined by a generally sympathetic critic, has stuck. It has become the term describing a style that, while short-lived, was the first avant-garde wave of the twentieth century. The jeering audiences at the Salon got an early look at what the new century would bring; artists would continue to Where do you see complementary color use color in totally non-conventional ways. contrast? This painting, one of Matisseʼs contributions to the Salon exhibit, is a portrait of Madame Matisse. She is shown in a pose that was typical of formal bourgeois portraits of the day, but this is not a typical portrait. Large areas of bright color render her features, dress and hat with little regard for subtle details. All the shapes have been simplified by solid areas of paint applied with broad strokes. Matisseʼs use of complementary color combinations gives energy to this painting. He uses the color green to shade his wifeʼs face along her nose and above her mouth, and then paints her upper lip a bright red, creating a complementary color contrast (also known as simultaneous contrast) that gives emphasis to her face. Another such contrast is seen in the purple used in her hat and dress surrounded by the yellow color he used through her face and in the background. The repetition of these colors also creates a rhythm that moves our eyes around the painting, and it also gives the painting a cohesive quality to create unity. For Educational Purposes Only Revised 08/12 2 Henri Matisse 3. The Open Window, Collioure 1905, oil on canvas, 21-3/4” x 18-1/8”, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C. This painting was among the very first fauve works. It was painted during the summer of 1905, when Matisse, together with André Derain, worked in the small Mediterranean fishing port of Collioure, near the Spanish border. The composition in this painting creates a motif that Matisse repeated many times: the view through an open window. Here the interior of the room is unimportant; it merely provides a frame for the colorful view that is full of light— inviting and vibrant. Through the window, small boats bob on pink waves under a sky banded with turquoise, pink, and periwinkle; the colors of the boats are reflected in the glass of the open doors as rectangles of watery green, red, Where do you see and lilac. contrasts of organic and geometric shapes? The colors Matisse used in this painting are hardly the colors of nature. The saturated colors of fauve paintings—all created between about 1904 and 1908—were not intended to be descriptive of nature. Colors were generally unblended, without the subtle shading that would have suggested three-dimensions. Depth was unimportant; it was color and rhythmic brush strokes that created the energy in these paintings. Warm colors dominate this painting. The red of the doors and surrounding walls advances towards the viewer, as do the red sails on the boats outside. Only occasional streaks of cool blue, green and violet halt the advance. Contrasts between organic and geometric shapes repeat in this painting. The geometric shape of the doorway creates a frame for the organic shapes of flowers on the terrace. Streaks of brown and green suggest a trellised vine that create another rectangular frame for the scene of the sailboats on the water beyond. This repetition of shape, along with the repetition of warm colors, contributes to the unity of the painting. For Educational Purposes Only Revised 08/12 3 Henri Matisse 4. SCANNING: Red Room (Harmony in Red) 1908, oil on canvas, 70-7/8” x 86-5/8”, Hermitage Museum St. Petersburg, Russia During a visit to North Africa, Matisse noticed that the intense sunlight seemed to flatten images and eliminate any sense of depth. Nowhere is this more vividly demonstrated than in this painting. Here we see only flat shapes in an interior scene of intense color. The wine carafes, the fruits and plates on the table, and even the features of the servant to the right are nothing more than simplified flat shapes of bright color. The color red both dominates this painting and contributes to its unity. The What is the main element that gives this warm red repeats on the wall and the tablecloth, with their cool blue decorative painting its unity? pattern. This pattern of warm and cool color contrast (temperature contrast) commands over three quarters of the painting, seeming to create one large continuous surface. Only the objects on the table and the position of the chair behind it communicate the shape and position of the table. The only other interruption to the red color is the window in the top left corner of the painting, with its open view of the green countryside beyond. This creates a complementary color contrast (simultaneous contrast) that gives the painting its energy. Additional complementary color contrasts occur where orange appears next to blue, such as the maidʼs hair next to the blue curving lines on the wall and the oranges next to the blue pattern on the tablecloth. Fun fact: This painting was originally painted with green tones and was called “Harmony in Green.” It was transformed into a “Harmony in Blue” and was publicly exhibited and sold to Sergei Shchukin, a Russian textile importer. A year later, Matisse convinced Shchukin to let him transform it once again, this time into “Harmony in Red.” The fact that Matisse painted over a predominantly blue background rather than on a fresh white canvas very likely influenced his choice of this particular red. For Educational Purposes Only Revised 08/12 4 Henri Matisse Scanning Questions Red Room (Harmony in Red) 1908, oil on canvas, 70-7/8” x 86-5/8” Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia Art Elements: What you see. Color • Is the color scheme predominately warm or cool? (Warm.) • Where do you see complementary color contrast? (The green outside the window next to the red walls of the interior; the blue arabesque pattern next to the orange fruit, chair seat, and womanʼs hair.) Shape • What geometric shapes do you see? (Round fruits, rectangular window, the house in the distance, the chairs.) • Describe the organic shapes you see. (Trees, long curving shapes of the blue pattern, the servant, the flowers.) Art Principles: How the elements are arranged. Unity • What is the single most unifying element in this painting? (The color red.) • What else contributes to the unity? (The repetition of the blue pattern in the walls and tablecloth; repetition of yellow color in the fruits and flowers on the table and the flowers outside the window.) Repetition/Rhythm • Where do you see shape repetition? (The repeating blue lines on the walls and tablecloth and in the trees, the repeated shapes of the fruits on the table, the slats on the chair backs.) • Which repetition is regular and which is irregular? (The blue pattern creates a regular rhythm and the fruit shapes create an irregular rhythm.) Technical Properties: How it was made. • Do you think this painting is large or small? (Large, approximately 6 feet by 7 feet.) • Can you find where the tablecloth ends and the wall begins? (A faint dark horizontal line marks the spot.) Expressive Properties: How it makes you feel. • Would you like a room like this in your house? • Would you feel the same about this painting if the walls and table cloth were painted different colors? For Educational Purposes Only Revised 08/12 5 Henri Matisse 5. The Conversation c. 1910, oil on canvas, 69-5/8” x 7ʼ1-3/8”, The Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia In this stark painting, flat shapes and large areas of repeated color dominate the scene. A man and a woman (presumably Matisse and his wife) are positioned in a balanced arrangement on either side of an open window.