After getting a pretty early train at 7:00am, and then making my way across country, I arrived in "The Smoke" at about 12:00, - Some five hours of travelling all in all!... Nevertheless, I met up with my old boss, Mark, and my old friend and colleague, David. What then ensued was a glorious lunch, at a superb Italian restaurant in the finance mile, (somewhere near Sun Street if I recall!!)... It was great to catch up with what had been happening in my old haunts, some good news, but also some bad news too, so not much changes after all).
Anyway, back to the purpose of my trip, which was to visit the Tate Modern, on the south bank of the Thames. I got there just after 2:00pm (a long lunch!) but spent the next four hours or so in wonderment.
I first looked at the current exhibition of "Matisse - The Cut-outs". This was quite a revelation for a novice like me. I had no idea how much Matisse, in the later years of his life, produced works based on simple cut out designs, created by painting gouache ( a thick watercolour paint, usually with vivid pigments, - often used by designers rather than artists per-se, which is used to create bold and vibrant items, - a typical application might be the style of posters created in the 1880s, - 1900s for the Moulin Rouge, Folies-Bergère, and other Paris night clubs, those iconic poster works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and similar).
Gouache can be used pretty much neat, to cover all manners of mistakes too, - very useful in more delicate watercolour paintings where, for example, a brilliant white ship's sail, or other (likely to be) man- made object needs to be enhanced.
Back to Matisse. Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was, in many critics' opinion, one of the most innovative painters of the 20th Century. During the last 17 years of his life he tuned into a completely new way of creating his own works, - and in some ways, I can see it was a change in his artistic practice which made it (in theory) easier for him to work. This was particularly timely, as Matisse had been gradually getting more and more frail and much less mobile. He had become bound to a wheel chair due to various health problems from the 1940s, and his strength generally, was ebbing away. Nevertheless, through the practice of using cut-outs, he remained working, and in fact created larger and more ambitious works, with a scale and drive that continued to increase, - at the same time, gaining excellent commissions through this new found lease of creativity.
His method was relatively simple. He created sheets of paper in various bold and vivid colours, - typically cobalt blues, bright red, green and yellow, and sometimes black & white, with gouache paint. Then when dry, he would cut out various "signature" type silhouettes of typically, leaves, apples, fish / sea-creatures, shells, coral, birds / parrots / swallows and "amoeba" style, almost like blooms of algae forms - a bit like seaweed is all I can describe it as, together with of course, dancing people (he was intrigued with dancing and the visions of moments in time throughout his life). These forms, often made up of a single piece or many separate sheets of the same colour, with layers of representation - were all cut out and meticulously arranged, re-arranged and repositioned. As he couldn't get out much through his ill-health, he tacked much of his work to the walls of the rooms in his house using thumb-tacks and small nails, assisted by a young artist helper (Lydia Delectorskya, also his secretary).
His inspiration for these forms and images came from a time much earlier in his life, when, (like Paul Gauguin), he spent some time in the southern pacific island paradise of Tahiti. Through an even brief study of Gauguin's work, you can see how it must have inspired Matisse. Matisse also spent a considerable amount of time in north Africa, Tangiers and in Morocco in particular, and it is from here that I believe he got his real love for the vibrancy of colour and dance together. This love of colour was built upon in Matisses' earlier works (such as Woman in a Hat, 1905), which helped to establish him as a post-impressionist (and firmly within the movement known as Fauvism), you can see the development of key influences from the original Impressionists, such as Van Gough, Renoir, Cezanne and Monet in this work alone;
 |
| Woman with a Hat, Matisse, 1905. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art |
The name of Matisse's original artistic movement 'Fauvism' came from (as many movements names do) a chance derogatory comment by an art critic.
After viewing the boldly colored canvases of Henri Matisse, André Derain, Albert Marquet,Maurice de Vlaminck, Kees van Dongen, Charles Camoin, and Jean Puy at the Salon d'Automne of 1905, the critic Louis Vauxcelles disparaged the painters as "fauves" (wild beasts), thus giving their movement the name by which it became known, Fauvism.
The artists shared their first exhibition at the 1905 Salon d'Automne. The group gained their name after Vauxcelles described their show of work with the phrase "Donatello au milieu des fauves!" ("Donatello among the wild beasts"), contrasting the paintings with a Renaissance-type sculpture that shared the room with them.
Reference; (Chilver, Ian (Ed.). "Fauvism", The Oxford Dictionary of Art, Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved from enotes.com, 26 December 2007).
It was much later in his life, when Matisse had already established himself as a successful artist, he increasingly simplified his works to push the boundaries of what was at the time, experimental and contemporary art. Many of his 'cut-out' works were commissioned by rich American patrons. Interestingly, the American culture at the time (1950s), was deep in the 'cold-war' attitudes towards anti-Communist propaganda, the celebration of capitalism, and the then culture of liking everything that they assumed communist soviet Russia would not like. (i.e. Freedom of Expression, Abstract post-modernism and so on). So Matisse found a willing audience and country of patronage. ( in the same way that Jackson Pollock and other classic 1950s Modernists had similarly done).
Arguably, the skill level involved might at first sight appear questionable in many works of modern art, but this is just a veneer or illusion (and I would say, it's simplicity adds infinitely to it's own elegance). The works however, were painstakingly considered and reconsidered, re-worked and re-arranged. By using this "cut-out" method, Matisse was able to create representations exactly how he wanted them to be. His method of cut-outs, at first, were guarded carefully by him. Remember, there were no computers then, - no re-arranging of an image on screen, no experimenting with Photoshop or CAD for morphing, blending or 3D. This simple way of working however allowed a far more powerful and canny way to design and layout his work to establish exactly what he wanted.
His foresight, was remarkably recorded in his own statement, ...
"By creating these coloured paper cut-outs, it seems to me that I am happily anticipating things to come. I dont think that I have ever found such balance as I have in creating these paper cut-outs. But I know that it will only be much later that people realise, to what extent the work I am doing today is in step with the future" - Henri Matisse
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please feel free to provide a comment, if you like something or don't like something, or there are errors, or you have additional observations or knowledge, it's all helpful to me - I always welcome feedback! - Thanks.