Henri Matisse, Free Artist in Constant Motion, Part IV: Tahiti Leads to Paper Cutouts

Matisse's Polynesian experience was over. On his way to Nice, to his home on the Place Charles Felix, he stopped in Marseille.

I passed through Marseille, a little frightened by the noise, the narrow streets, the houses so stiff. From there I arrived in Nice. It was the month of August. The greenery seemed to me to be extremely scarce. I felt a little disappointed to return to Provence. I never saw it again.

In my workshop in Nice, I worked on a painting for several months before my trip to Tahiti, without finishing it. When I returned, I picked it up where I left off. I worked on it every day and managed to finish it in a few weeks.

And here is an explanatory video about this painting.

The contrast between the woman's slim figure and her puffy skirt is striking, and the play of shapes and colors between the figure and the background is impressive.

Barnes Foundation – First and Secret Use of Paper Cutouts

Albert Barnes, a billionaire pharmacist and art collector, commissioned a huge painting from Matisse to grace the main exhibition hall of the foundation he had established in Merion, a suburb of Philadelphia. But Matisse returned from Polynesia already kidnapped. From 1930 to 1933, he worked on the assignment. Barnes gave him a free hand in choosing the subject. Matisse had a special fondness for the dance motif, which symbolized in his eyes life and its sweeping rhythm, movement, dynamism, creation. The artist had already dedicated three paintings to it, but not yet on such a scale.

Matisse arrived at the Barnes Foundation. It was the first time he had been asked to adapt a painting to an architectural structure. A real challenge. The triptych was to hang above three windows five meters high – glazed doors that opened and led to a lush green garden. Dazzling light poured through them, but the ceiling above them was, by contrast, completely shaded.

When Matisse returned to Nice, he rented a garage the size of a showroom and began making a first version using a long bamboo pole to the end of which he attached the pencils and brushes. He did not like the experiment. This is the triptych “The Unfinished Dance,” which is permanently on display in the Henri Matisse Hall at the Pompidou Center.

Then he came up with the idea of ​​paper cutouts painted in gouache. Gray figures on a background of diagonal stripes in pink, blue, and black. He attached the cutout shapes here and there on the first painting, playing with them like the pieces of a giant puzzle, until he reached the desired combination. Like Tahitian women in the art of tippe , cutout motifs embroidered on fabric. This was the artist's first use of paper cutouts. For the time being, he didn't tell anyone about this technique. Only later would he open it up and show it to everyone.

This second version, the triptych “The Dance,” is also permanently on display in the Henri Matisse Hall at the Pompidou Center . And why wasn’t it hung in the Barnes Foundation’s exhibition hall? Because of a mistake in its dimensions that forced Matisse to make a third version. This was inaugurated in April 1933 in the designated place, above the three illuminated windows.

The gray dancers seem to emerge from the stones of the wall, breaking through the borders of the arches, falling, leaping upward, turning toward the delicate pink of dawn or toward the twilight of night. The diagonal background strips, like sections of stained glass, embody the rhythm of the music to which similar faceless dancers move, only delicate lines mark the folds of the body from behind, breasts from in front. The subject of the triptych is not the dancers themselves but the dance, its sweeping rhythm embodying the joy of creation and the whirlwind of life.

The three versions can be seen here.

And here is a recording of Georges Charbonnier interviewing Henri Matisse, in 1950, on the program “The Color of Time.” Matisse gives fascinating details about the triptych, and for those of you who don’t speak French , I have freely translated his answers.

I love dancing very much. Dancing is a wonderful thing: life, movement, rhythm. Before I started fulfilling the orders for Moscow (the two panels “Music” and “Dance” painted for the art collector Sergei Shchukin, 1909-1910, A.L.), I went very simply one Sunday afternoon to the “Moulin de la Galette” (a well-known dance club in Montmartre , A.L.).

I watched the people dancing. I was especially impressed by the perandole (an ancient traditional Provençal dance, A.L.), in the middle or at the end of the ball. The dancers held each other's hands, sweeping away the strays, running along the hall, it was very happy. And all this against the background of simple, bouncy music.

I knew this atmosphere well and when I had to paint again (the Barnes Foundation commission, A.L.), I returned to the Moulin de la Galette to watch the dance again. When I returned home, I painted the composition on the surface allotted for it, four meters, while singing the melody I heard in the Moulin de la Galette, so that all the dancers are coordinated and dance together to the same rhythm.

On the ceiling of the Barnes Foundation hall, in keeping with its architectural structure, I painted the figures larger than they actually are, each three meters high. Half of one figure emerges from above, another figure lies below – I gave the possibility of seeing a larger dance because I used segments, pieces.

The viewer continues to visualize the entire body, imagining the dancers emerging from the wall, the circle extending beyond the frame. This is the challenge presented by the painting: expressing infinity through a limited and limited space. The function of decorative art is to enlarge space in a way that we are no longer constrained by walls.

The painting had to be placed above three glazed doors that were separated by opaque frames. I painted the black strips of the painting’s background a darker black than the gray of the frames, so that I created a strong contrast within the system – doors, frames, ceiling. I converted the existing contrast, doors-frames, to the contrast I created, doors-frames-painting. In this way, I used the conditions of the place to highlight the painting.

But in harmony with everything. The composition had to decorate a hall that presented the beauties of the paintings of Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat. I was not allowed to, nor did I pretend to, and did not want to compete with these wonderful paintings. I used, therefore, airy colors, which did not reflect reality but were in harmony with my feelings in the face of the power of the dance.

Without Tahiti Matisse, there would be no Matisse.

The Polynesian experience filled Matisse with ideas, joy and confidence, but its direct influence was not yet evident. It was not until 1935, five years after he returned to France, that the first Polynesian painting, “Window in Tahiti,” was born, in which a new color scale, intensified by the passage of time, burst forth.

This painting recreates the view of Papeete harbor from the balcony of Matisse's room on the second floor of the Stuart Hotel. "Without Tahiti Matisse would not have been Matisse," said Louis Aragon. Many of Matisse's works until the day of his death would recreate the Polynesian light and forms in repeated gestures of gratitude to the memories being manipulated and admired.

Lydia D. – assistant, muse, and loyal companion to the end and beyond

A young 22-year-old Russian named Lydia Delektorskaya entered the lives of Amelie and Henri Matisse as Henri’s assistant, muse, and secretary. He first saw her when she came in 1932 to help him finish the huge painting for the Barnes Foundation, “The Dance.” After six months, when the assignment was complete, Henri Matisse sent her away, but shortly after, Amelie invited her back again because she had back problems and needed help every morning.

So Amelie stayed with the Matisses for a year without ever attracting the attention of Henri, who saw her as nothing more than his wife's assistant. Then, one day, suddenly, while drinking afternoon tea, she rested her head and arms on the back of a chair. All because of one pose. That was the moment when Matisse noticed her potential as a model. “Wait, don't move!” he called to her and began to paint. He might as well have said: “I found it!”

From that moment on, Lydia became as necessary as air to breathe. Matisse painted her incessantly, every day. The place occupied by Lydia D. as a soulmate, as a muse, and as a model grew. Amelie saw this special closeness as a betrayal and presented an ultimatum: either she or me. Henri chose his wife and Lydia was forced to leave. But Amelie decided to divorce anyway. The harm that had been done could no longer be undone, as far as she was concerned. In 1939, after forty years of marriage, the couple separated.

Matisse asked Lydia to return. Lydia, a guardian angel, would faithfully and devotedly accompany Henri Matisse for the next twenty-two years until his death and would work for his work even after that. Lydia took care of all the material hassles, the arrangements, the moving of residences from place to place, the organization of exhibitions, and allowed Matisse, who was growing weaker, to concentrate on his art.

Her youth, strength and kindness illuminated the life of the aging artist. Her beauty, the flexibility of her limbs and the curves of her body served as a strong source of inspiration for him: Matisse dedicated ninety paintings and over a hundred drawings to her. The orphan Lydia, whose parents died in the epidemics of the Russian Revolution when she was 12 years old, who came from Siberia through Manchuria to France, lonely and poor in a foreign land, found meaning in her life.

Matisse began a fruitful second chapter in his life that he could not have accomplished without Lydia. Henri knew what he owed Lydia, Lydia knew what she owed Henri.

On November 3, 1954, Matisse died in his sleep at the Hotel Regina. He was 84 years old when he died. The previous evening, Lydia had entered his home, a towel-turban wrapped around her freshly washed hair. Matisse painted a portrait of her, held it up to assess its quality, and said in a serious tone, “Okay.” These were his last words.

The next day, after his death, Lydia left the hotel and did not attend the funeral. Henri Matisse was buried in the Simier cemetery in Nice and his wife Amelie Thotman, four years later, next to him. Lydia D. passed away on March 16, 1998, at the age of 88, in Paris . Ephra Houtman, at her request, in a cemetery in Pavlovsk (a city near St. Petersburg).

We have brought forward the later, the end that is not the end when it comes to an artist like Henri Matisse and a model like Lydia. Let's return to the chronological twist of the story. Henri slowly discovers the artistic depths inherent in Lydia's character.

Impressively matches the pink curves of the body and the blue plaid of the bedspread.

I'm trying to find a second tone across the complex, a tone that won't divide it and harm its unity. I've already found the blue tone and all that's left is for me to find the pink tone.

The painting “Dream” is a kind of preparation for “Pink Nude” (both, by the way, have the same bedspread with blue squares), which is reminiscent of “Blue Nude (Memory of Biscara).” And all these paintings lead to Matisse’s famous “Blue Nude” series, which he completed in 1952.

The paper cutouts, which Matisse considered the pinnacle of his work, were born from his travels. He began using the radical technique regularly from 1940 until it became his main medium after 1948, when he could no longer stand for long hours. Matisse's assistants would hand him sheets painted with gouache, and he would cut them out in his bed, instructing them exactly where to stick each cutout on paper that hung on the wall.

Henri Matisse needed help, and even more, in 1941, after he suffered from colon cancer and underwent a difficult operation. “A hair from an Angora cat was between me and death,” he would say. The doctors gave him only six months to live. Lydia could not care for him alone at all hours of the day and night, without a break. “A nanny was needed.”

The ad was answered by a 21-year-old young woman, Monique Bourgeois, a student at a nursing school. Monique also became, at the same time as Lydia, a model and muse. Monique Bourgeois was an art lover and would play an important role in Matisse's last years. The artistic collaboration between Matisse and Monique would give birth to the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence.

Let's not rush the process. Let's return to Matisse, who is in an iron corset after surgery, suffering pain but recovering, knowing that life has been given to him again as a gift.

Everything is new, everything is fresh, like the world has just been born.

As in life, so in art, Matisse fought for the attainment of truth from a starting point of love. Love, love for radiant beauty, for light, devotion to a goal out of generosity and the expansion of materiality. Perhaps that is why Matisse is loved by the audience who see in his paintings an expression of love for what he paints and explanations for this love. And what Matisse paints belongs to everyday life.

The paper cutouts painted with gouache colors

In 1943, Matisse and Lydia moved to Vence to find shelter from the bombings of World War II. Matisse’s beautiful villa in Vence is called “The Dream,” but how horrified the owner was when he saw German soldiers stationed on the ground floor. Yet he did not let the horror of war darken his light. Quite the opposite.

In this dramatic double context, private and historical, the memories of the Polynesian experience became increasingly intense. Conscious of the miracle of his resurrection, Matisse was struck by a burst of renewed creativity in which the azure of the Mediterranean Sea merged with the deep blue of the Pacific Ocean. The constraints of health stirred up a long, fruitful inner journey.

Everything in Vence seems so different to me from Nice that I am dressing it up here with my memories of Tahiti. I am living my life anew. This morning, when I walked in front of my house and saw all the girls, women and men racing on bicycles towards the market, it seemed to me that I was in Tahiti, at the time of its opening. When the breeze brings me the scent of a forest or the smell of burning wood, I smell the trees of the islands.

Yes, my stay in Tahiti enriched my imagination, and all this magnificent and beautiful light, which I couldn't get enough of, now appears in my work in the form of obsessive images, corals, oysters, fish, birds, jellyfish, sponges.

The memories of the trip to Tahiti have only come back to me now, five years later. It is more important to be absorbed in things first than to want to capture them on the spot, in real time, in the moment. I cut all these elements and attach them to the walls, temporarily. The small lines symbolize the horizon line.

I don't know yet what I'll do with it. Maybe panels, maybe tapestries...

I have achieved a form distilled to the essence. Details diminish the purity of lines, harm the intensity of emotions. I move towards calmness through the simplification of ideas and the simplification of form. I cut within the paint, I sculpt, this is the moment when my hand sings of itself.

Matisse developed the method for the publication of his book “Jazz,” which included twenty prints of paper cutouts accompanied by texts – the artist’s thoughts – appearing in his own handwriting. Despite the quality of the print, Matisse was disappointed with the result, which, he said, erased the contours and flattened the composition.

From then on, he would devote himself more and more to oil paper cutouts. The walls of his villa in Vence, the walls of his apartment in Nice, and then the walls of his suite at the Hotel Regina would be covered with flowers, trees, birds, and sea creatures.

But despite Matisse's reservations, it should be noted that his book "Jazz" remains in the history of art as a masterpiece, as an album by a first-rate painter, one of the most beautiful of the twentieth century. New editions of it continue to be published, in collaboration with Matisse's heirs, using optimal techniques, faithful to the original will of Henri Matisse and the publisher Tériade, who conceived the idea of ​​the album and asked the artist to implement it.

Solo exhibition at the National Museum of Modern Art

On June 11, 1948, Lydia met with the secretary of the National Museum of Modern Art (Tokyo Palace in the 16th arrondissement) to prepare an exhibition in Matisse's honor. The exhibition took place between June and September 1949, with Matisse closely supervising every detail.

It reflected the three directions from which the artist approached the expression of color and light in the two years between 1946 and 1948: the paper cutouts in which Matisse cut into the paint, the large ink drawings in which he played with black and white, and the series of colorful rooms in which he strove to achieve a harmonious composition.

In this painting, “Red Room,” from the series presented in the exhibition, the dynamic red zigzag line connects and connects the floor to the walls, fruits and flowers, the outside (a garden reflected through the window) and the inside, directions, shapes and colors, without forgetting the medal hanging on the wall, a painting within a painting, the eye of the painter and the eye of the viewer.

To get an idea of ​​the two additional mediums, the paper cutouts and the ink drawings, which were presented in the 1949 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in the Tokyo Palace, we watched the video of the current exhibition, “Matisse, Like a Novel,” at the Museum of Modern Art at the Pompidou Center.

Paper cutouts, paper cutouts, paper cutouts

Since Matisse discovered Nice, he divided his time between Paris and the south. In 1938, he took a suite at the Hotel “Regina” in the heights of Nice. In 1942, as mentioned, he moved to his villa in Vence and at the end of December 1949, he settled again, this time permanently, in a suite at “Regina.” He had at his disposal in the magnificent and modern palace for the time, a spacious and bright apartment with a comfortable studio that suited his artistic needs and his state of health.

A painter's paradise, Lydia said. The beloved objects he had purchased in France and brought from his travels abroad were placed on the furniture, decorating the suite, Oriental rugs gleamed in the sunlight that poured in abundantly through the windows. Optimal conditions, indeed.

With the help of Lydia, who employed additional assistants, Matisse continued his creative activity until the last moment. With a two-meter bamboo stick, he made sketches on the walls and instructed his assistants which gouache colors to mix, how to paint sheets of paper with them, where to stick this or that piece that he himself had cut out with tailor's scissors. Matisse tried compositions endlessly.

Matisse now expresses himself mostly in rounded lines that have, at the same time, the element of the oriental arabesque and the element of the Polynesian algae, in his great aesthetic innovation of this last period of his life – the paper cutouts painted with gouache. “A small garden surrounding me in which I walk,” Matisse defined them. The revolutionary way allowed the artist to express himself freely and joyfully, providing him with the means to overcome his chronic bouts of depression.

“The Parrot and the Mermaid” is one of the largest paper cutouts in terms of size. Repeating motifs in different variations of foliage and pomegranates were glued to the white canvas. The white space surrounding the objects is no less important than the objects themselves. Two individual shapes, a parrot on the left and a mermaid on the right, stand out dramatically among the abundance of leaves and pomegranates. This is the meaning of the title of the work, “The Parrot and the Mermaid.”

Look at the blue woman, look inside me, look at the fruits and leaves – paper cutouts! On the way to the arabesque. The arabesque is arranged like a melody with its special dive.

In a recent self-portrait, “The King’s Sadness,” the artist is depicted as a black figure, seated in an armchair, playing a guitar. The flowers painted on her send out yellow petals, which fly and flutter cheerfully like musical notes. A green man emphasizes the rhythm of the music by beating a drum, on the left, a salute to Matisse’s travels in the East. His hands correspond with the hands of the guitarist and also with the leaves of Polynesia. The hands resemble the leaves.

On the right we see a sensual dancer, swirling in a sweeping dance. Her face, eyes, and legs are expressed in black. A salute to the female body and the inspiration that Matisse drew from all his many models. A salute to the dance motif, so important in his work.

The king, Matisse himself, is sad because he is at the end of his life and has lost his health and mobility, but at the same time he is grateful for all the pleasures he has known in the past. And he still knows how to play the violin and enjoy the sweeping, joyful, soothing and comforting music, so important to him throughout his life. And he still enjoys his memories. Matisse is grateful for his royal life, for the pleasures that surrounded him and were at his disposal, and for the fulfillment of the goals he set for himself. The artist knows that he has missed nothing, what satisfaction and what comfort!

Art critics link the masterpiece “The King’s Sorrow” to Rembrandt’s “David Playing the Harp Before Saul,” which also features a self-portrait. Matisse identifies with King Saul’s sadness, but while the latter, in his twilight years, needed the music of the young David, a rising star, Matisse knows how to play himself. Matisse is the old and the young, the sad and the happy. His will is intertwined with a strong duality, like that of Baudelaire, whose poems he loved and illustrated, and who also inspired some of his independent paintings.

Indeed, the essence of Matisse's travels was the Polynesian experience that gave rise to the paper cutouts and thus played a major role in the second chapter of the artist-tourist's artistic career until the end of his life. His last masterpieces, "Jazz", "The Parrot and the Mermaid", "The Sorrow of the King" and "The Summit of the Summits - The Chapel of the Rosary in Vence" are the most perfect expressions of the paper cutout technique, in all its northern richness.

This concludes Part Four of the article.

This article is the fourth and final in a series of four articles about Henri Matisse.

To return to the introduction and read all the articles, click on this link.

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