Matisse

Henri Matisse, the famous French Artist, is considered as a pioneer of mordent art. He is also a draughtsman, printmaker, sculptor and principally, a painter. Henri Matisse did not start his art study and career until he was 21 years old. He was initially labeled as a Fauve (wild beast), meanwhile; he developed a simple style of painting by mastering of the expressive language of color and drawings. During his special period of art and decoration, he produced many great paintings, such as La Dance, the conversation and etc. Though the Fauve was decline at that time, the reputation of Henri Matisse’s art kept rising. Therefore, Matisee enjoys the respect as high as Picasso and is recognized as a master of color and lines.

Henri Matisse was born on December 31, 1869 in Le Cateau-Cambr-sis, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France. He was the first son of his parents, who were doing seed business. Though Matisse liked paiting, he took it as a hobby only. Matisse did not expect to be an artist during his teenage and he even did not visit any of art museums. As being instructed by his father, Matisse studied law in Paris. After that, Henri Matisse worked as a court administrator at his hometown. It was his mother happened to discover Henri Matisse’s talent on art. Matisse once had a small surgery and stayed in a hospital. His mother bought Matisse a set of painting supplies to during his recovery period. Since then, Matisse’s life changed.
Henri Matisse started his art study in Paris in 1891. He made a visit to the painter Russell, who therefore, introduced Henri Matisse to Impressionism and to the work of Van Gogh. Henri Matisse's style changed completely. He would later say that Russell was his teacher, and Russell explained colour theory to him.

Matisse had a daughter born from his art model. This daughter later on became his model again.
Successfully, Henri Matisse exhibited five paintings in the salon of Beaux-Arts. In 1898, he went to London and continued his art study. At the same year, Henri Matisse married with Amelie Noellie Parayre. Both his marriage and art career turned out productive - he had two sons born soon and in 1904 and 1905 separately, and the first solo exhibition held in Paris in 1904.

At early 1900th, Henri Matisse was recognized as a leader of Fauvism, he and his group of fauvists set up an exhibition work at a Salon in Paris. In 1904, he met Pablo Picasso, who was 12 years younger than him. Since then, they are friends and rivals as well.

From 1911 to 1917 he instructed young artists in a private and non-commercial school in Paris. Meanwhile, he used strong color and simple lines to set up his own feature of art. He worked and achieved great success for decades.

However, his health got worse since Henri Matisse separated from his wife after 41 years’ marriage. In 1941, he was diagnosed with cancer and had a surgery. Nevertheless, his art career was still blooming. In 1947, he published Jazz, a limited-edition book containing prints of colorful paper cut collages, accompanied by his written thoughts.

Henri Matisse died of a heart attack at the age of 84 in November 3, 1954.

Henri Matisse's career can be divided into several periods that changed stylistically. Nevertheless, Matisse’s underlying aim always remained the same: to discover the essential character of things and to produce an art of balance, purity, and serenity, as he himself put it in his "Notes of a Painter" in 1908. The years 1908-13 were focused on art and decoration. The decline of the Fauvist movement after 1906 did nothing to affect the rise of Henri Matisse. He produced several large canvases and paintings, such as Dance and Music (1909-10), La Dance (1909), and The Conversation (1909-1912) and etc.
Simplification was essential to Henri Matisse’s progress on his way through this period. Yet his method applied on his paintings not only purification, but lavish enrichment. Henri Matisse was working systematically towards the most exact adjustment of color and form that modern painting had achieved. Henri Matisse wrote that he would use the simplest, use the minimum of means, which were the most flexible for the painter to express his inner vision.

The whole world at that period was moving towards speedy changes of ideas and means; it seemed the history and society endued Henri Matisse with the feature of simplification. During those years, the new technology was like a bomb. Camera surprised people by copying the scenery and portrait as they were; therefore, the traditional way of paining was loosing its value. Steam engine was changing the speed of this world. Telegraphy used telex, which were shortening words, to communicate between the long distance. High rises and factories were shocking the new society. Every one seemed in a hurry. People’s life style changed, and even women’s cloth were changed into more simplified fashion. Henri Matisse and people at his time began to accept the new things one after the other. Thus, simplification was the mean new tidal at that time.

Henri Matisse abandoned three-dimensional effects in favor of dramatically simplified areas of pure color, flat shape, and strong pattern. The intellectual splendor of this dazzlingly beautiful art appealed to the Russian mentality, and many great Henri Matisses’ arts are now in Russia. Henri Matisse had a long association with the Russian art collector Sergei Shchukin. During that period, Henri Matisse also was interested in and visiting great exhibition of Chinese Art. He admitted that he was curious about the eastern art style.

"The Conversation”, painted during 1909 to 1912, is a perfect representation of Henri Matisse’s simplification and master of color.

When people look at “the Conversation” at first time, they would be reminded of the famous novel of “Anna Karenina” written by Leo Tolstoy. In fact, both of the novel and painting’s background were at same time when manpower was in dominant at home and in the society. In the painting, one man and his wife are taking a voiceless conversation in the morning (as the man is wearing his pajamas). The pattern of the man’s pajamas is straight and upright lines. Those lines, plus his stiff pose, tell simply the man’s characters - obstinate, conservative, inflexible and dominating. He is so upstanding that the picture can not contain the top part of his head.

Besides of the man, between the man and the woman, there is a window with iron railings. In fact the railings are part of the man, coldly separating the blight landscape from the their home and their lives, especially the woman’s life.

The man’s wife is sitting in a chair. The chair is her supporter and a part of her body that she can lean back. The chair is a symbol of status, which makes her so low that she has to lift her head so that she can look up her husband. The chair looks like a prison that traps the woman away from freedom and beauty scenery out side of the window. There is a black color (dots) on the wife’s forehead, suggesting the deep and big worries in her mind.

The couple’s eyes meet each other, ironically to the title of the painting; there is no communication between them. They are an adverse couple.

Here, the saturation of color carries a sense of physical presence. It also gives us the first sight of the painter of the self absorbed in self-hood. Henri Matisse is seen to be the painter of the emotional unmatched and sickness of a marriage.

In the conversation, Henri Matisse created a design that at every point had a meaning. From Henri Matisse’s other significant paintings, we can tell that his mastery of the expressive language of color and drawing, offers the perfect harmony between nature and human beings (as the La Dance), displays the inner parts of human’s life and thoughts (as The Conversation). Every piece of his arts has an astonishing force to the viewers. He is a skillful simplifier of form and a marvelous manipulator of color. Simplification does not mean easiness. Henri Matisse’s unique technique, deep level of thing and celebrating color, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art over a half-century. General speaking, Henri Matisse is one of the best-known artists of the twentieth century.

Bibliography
Elderfield, John. “III. 1908-1913 Art and Decoration”, Henri Matisse The museum of Modern Art, New York, 1992
Gowing, Lawrence. Henri Matisse, S.P.A.D.E.M Paris, 1979
Stokstad, Marilyn. Art History, Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers, 1995
Louis, Jean, “The cage of the Fauves at the salon”, Art of 20th Century, Presser of Canale & C.S.p.A in Borgraro T.se, 1999
Selz, Jean. “Henri Matisse”, Crown Publishers, Inc. New York, 1990