On Art
RAYNOR, VIVIEN
On Art MATISSE TO MAO BY VIVIEN RAYNOR Matisse took up sculpture "as a rest from painting ... to put order in my feelings, and find a style to suit me. When I found it in sculpture, it helped me...
...and the flesh between the lids and brows has been pulled forward, giving a beetled effect...
...a solid rendering of the masses implied by his incomparable line...
...The bulging eyes of No...
...His picture of the swastika-draped train carrying Chiang Kai-shek's German advisers away (1938) was noteworthy, but in the light of more recent history did not have quite the impact it should...
...Riboud was also the author of some fine color work, notably one of a jade and gold burial suit from the Han Dynasty...
...The shaft of nose runs up virtually uninterrupted into a globe of a forehead, whose adjoining planes are expressed by slashes...
...Picasso and Matisse are, of course, the giants straddling the century, though Picasso would be better described as leaning on it...
...With Matisse, though, any such material is valuable, for we don't know that much about him as a personality, and these finished bronzes shed some light on his thought processes...
...when he finds the jaguar killing the hare brutal and sadistic, he appalls...
...Well known for his writings on Rodin, the author approaches the subject with affection and considerable knowledge...
...Despite official acknowledgment of his stature, Matisse has, deep in critical hearts, been something of a second son...
...4 is the most expressive and complete: A slight upward tilt imparts an imperiousness, further emphasized by some interesting formal liberties...
...Thus it is perhaps unjust to dwell on the idiosyncracies that detract from his monograph, since most such works present the same problem: the eerie feeling that their authors are inhabiting some other time groove...
...A word about Professor Albert Elsen's The Sculpture of Henri Matisse, published by Abrams and obtainable at the Museum bookstore for $12.50...
...Starting from a cast of No...
...Depending on your idea of art, the last version is either the climax or the denouement...
...Of the numerous outstanding pictures, the majority were Riboud's: the building of the first bridge over the Yangtze River, at Hankow, with a junk cutting across the foreground...
...This could be construed as an intrusion of Cubism...
...examining them in sequence, that impression fades...
...His influence, while quite as pervasive as Picasso's, has been far less obvious and harder to measure, especially since he neither invented Cubism nor depended on historical inspiration...
...Behind the Great Wall, which closed April 11, comprised 200 pictures taken over 100 years, the chief stars being Henri Cartier-Bresson, Marc Riboud and Rene Burri, although others, such as Robert Capa and Carl Mydans, were represented...
...When Professor Elsen says: "Matisse thought in three dimensions as a sculptor," he dumbfounds...
...he died in 1954...
...Involuntarily, one glances at the foot of the page to see if the answer is printed there, upside down...
...The Jeanettei????beautifully arranged in single file????are a dramatic demonstration of Matisse's system...
...He has the curious habit of posing rhetorical questions and answering them with even more rhetorical questions: "Why did Matisse so frequently put his sculpture into his paintings...
...Then he apparently decided to stay with the basic masses rather than continue breaking them down...
...a head-and-shoul-ders of a female engineer eating lunch, her goggles tilted up...
...Most interesting of all are the series, since they follow a pattern...
...a man hoeing, set against a landscape falling away in endless terraces...
...a beautifully austere shot of a couple waiting to get a divorce in a room that recalls Irish interiors...
...He wanted his painting to be the famous "armchair" in which harried workers might rest and be soothed...
...That expression was his main concern is nevertheless true, and it is most apparent in his manipulation of solid form...
...Matisse was born in 1869, 12 years before Picasso...
...You can stand at the head of the line and, after taking in No...
...Now his entire output of sculpture is on display at the Museum of Modern Art, in the rooms adjoining the Picasso exhibition already discussed here ("Another Homage to the Master," NL, March 6...
...Reduced to clumps, the hair combines with the accentuated nose to make this very striking model look like a cockatoo...
...They were followed by the Symbolist backlash, which in turn gave way to another confrontation with nature, in the work of Van Gogh and the Fauves...
...3, amiable in expression and encased in lids that are like bursting seed pods, are now pushed back under the brows...
...The most remarkable Cartier-Bresson was an arabesque-like line of people scrambling to exchange their money for gold during the later days of the Kuomintang (the struggle resulted in 10 deaths...
...When I found it in sculpture, it helped me in painting...
...Viewing the five heads in group, the last one appears to be a violent formal departure...
...The overall effect of the dark bronzes in their grayish-white surroundings is pleasingly monochromatic and quiet, and the whole production reflects great credit on its director, Alicia Legg, who is also responsible for the fine catalogue ($2.50...
...it is tempting, however, to think he left it "unfinished" because there was nothing more to add to these elementary forms, powerful enough in their starkness...
...1, the relatively academic version that is off to one side, watch the remaining four literally going through their changes...
...He spent a long time on an idea, frequently producing several versions...
...In any case, there is reason to suspect that comprehension of color niceties is fairly rare, that people respond more to form and content...
...Capa, predictably, was more concerned with war and politics...
...The five heads of Jeanette span 1910-13...
...Most extraordinary of all and quite discordant is the lump in the left eye socket, doing duty for ball and lids and flattened to show direction of sight...
...Consisting of heads and small figures mounted on pedestals and in glass cases, the collection is spaciously arranged and in some instances accompanied by related drawings (but no paintings?their presence would have been too distracting...
...There is a considerable range of mood in Matisse's painting????work from the World War I period, for instance, is distinctly melancholy????but its general serenity makes it hard to label him Expressionist, given the term's strident connotations...
...Was it because of his training with Moreau, which introduced him to the practice of including sculptures in paintings...
...In short, his sculpture represents detailed exploration of the poses and forms used in his figure painting...
...Deriving his technique from his teacher Bourdelle and from Rodin, Matisse used it for very unheroic ends...
...It is understandable that such Expressionistic qualities are harder to see in his painting: The interaction of colors, though itself an expression of tension, can be too diverting...
...It is as if he] discovered an infinitely thin area situated between them . . . [where] it is possible to achieve independent existence and serenity...
...Considering the magnitude of the subject the show was meager, but still preferable as a source of information to the messages from our condescending newscasters, who seem to pity the Chinese for having no superbowl...
...Apparently audiences like to sweat along with the creator...
...Apart from the splendor of the porcelain and sculpture, it gave pause to reflect on the binge we Westerners have enjoyed in that country...
...When he began painting, the possibilities of reproducing nature had been exhausted by the Impressionists...
...As the historian Werner Haft-mann put it: "Matisse is the only painter who succeeded in escaping from the system of reference defined by the co-ordinates of the world and self...
...he seldom failed to include the significant detail????like the protruding ears in Olga, a seated nude????that completed the personality...
...artists painted their opinion of what they saw...
...Tm hose not suffering from media burn????as someone once pinpointed it????may have been drawn to an exhibition of China photographs at the Metropolitan Museum...
...While at the museum I checked the China collection, which was hard by...
...It is always a tale of problems set and solved and, whether told by the protagonist or his biographer, tends usually to obscure the achievement...
...They seem to be discovering, slowly, the existence of art, piecing together potsherds of information, musing meanwhile on how it was done and what it is for...
...He perceived much movement in not only the limbs but the relatively inert torso, especially when it was reclining...
...We have become accustomed to hearing the "real" story behind accomplishment, be it the discovery of the double helix, the inspired football play, or the creation of a work of art...
...Planes of the lower jaw have been slapped upwards in a way that buttons the mouth in a disapproving expression...
...3, Matisse seems to have built up fundamental masses in the usual way and to have begun working down to the smaller forms, as in the fairly detailed treatment of lea-netted right eye...
...It seems the effortless painter of comfortable armchairs struggled a little after all...
...This was the beginning of Expressionism, whereby nature was paralleled rather than imitated...
...The first work is a straightforward conception, and is succeeded by versions that, formally speaking, are more complex...
...even the copy of Bar-ye's Jaguar Devouring a Hare (1901) occupied him for two years...
...But the process is not so much a matter of abstracting from the preceding work as reseeing the living subject...
...Yet Matisse's decision to explore "luxe, calme et volupte," to quote one of his titles, should not be interpreted as a flight from reality...
...He] succeeded in transcending the tragic outlook that has cast its shadow over modern painting...
...The Back, I through IV, 1908-30...
Vol. 55 • April 1972 • No. 7
