Henri Matisse, Free Artist in Constant Motion, Part III: Polynesia

The series of harem women, which occupied Matisse for more than a decade, had exhausted itself to the limit. The harem women, who had been the main actresses, had become mere extras before disappearing altogether. The scenery, with all its accessories, had also lost its charm and meaning. Henri Matisse sank into depression. His world was narrowing for him.

To renew, expand, and expand, he followed in the footsteps of one of his favorite painters, Paul Gauguin, who forty years earlier, in 1891, had sailed for the first time to Tahiti. French Polynesia, a hundred islands, a pristine lagoon, and primeval forests – a promise of paradise, rebirth, there and now.

March 1930, Henri Matisse sets sail for Polynesia, on what will be the last great journey of his life. Alone, completely alone, without a return ticket, without even booking a hotel in Tahiti. In his studio, an unfinished painting, “The Yellow Dress,” remains on the easel. The undisputed maestro of modern art is at the height of his fame at the age of 60. What is the purpose of his journey? What is he looking for?

Two and a half months in Polynesia during which he painted only one painting that did not satisfy him but accumulated impressions and experiences, a huge accumulation that was assimilated into his memory and published years later. In Polynesia, as in Collioure, Corsica, Algeria, Morocco, in all the places he went, he was inspired by the magnificent scenery and the contact with the special people he met, as planned or by chance. All the journeys connected with each other to nourish and enrich the final peak, Polynesia, a lifelong journey.

New York

Traveling to Polynesia in those days was a real adventure. Matisse arrived from Nice in the Normandy port city of Le Havre, and boarded a transatlantic passenger ship. A stopover in New York. The urban modernity of the city, which Matisse had not yet encountered, made a deep impression on him.

The first time I saw America, New York, in 1930, at seven o'clock in the evening, the black and gold mass, reflected in the water at night, plunged me into an incomparable ecstasy. Someone on the deck next to me said, "A sparkling dress," which helped me to understand more precisely the sight that was before my eyes. New York seemed to me like a gold ingot.

Later, as I walked along the Fifth Avenue sidewalk, I received a real electric shock. From the street, the skyscrapers give an intense feeling of all shades brightening, from base to roof. Starting from the tenth floor, the sky begins – the light swallows the structure. The light and its reflections dissolve the reality of the building. The fading of the shades that disappear in the sky, borrowing the sweetness of the essence of the sky with which they merge, gives the passerby a feeling of relief, unexpected for a European tourist. New York is wonderful to me. The atmosphere is so dry, the light is very pure, not material, the light of crystal.

Matisse, who bought a camera for the first time, began to immortalize the city, trying above all to capture the play of light and shadow on the skyscrapers. A new world, large and majestic, like the sea, and in addition, the feeling of the human effort that was invested in it. The feeling of freedom, which comes from controlling larger spaces, is strengthened and established in the presence of the skyscrapers.

Why did everyone tell me I wouldn't like it? Since I've been here, I feel twenty years younger.

The road to Polynesia continued on a long train ride through the American West, a journey that further accentuated the welcome disconnection from the old world from which he came.

I arrived in San Francisco, where painters attacked me and said: “You are here, we will throw a big feast in your honor.” I replied: “No, impossible.” I boarded the ship “Tahiti,” owned by an English company, which sailed from San Francisco to New Zealand.

Arrival in Tahiti, Papeete

On March 29, 1930, at dawn, Matisse discovered Tahiti for the first time. For two and a half months he would not get enough of the landscapes, the culture, the people, permanent residents and passers-by. In Papeete, the capital city, in the north of the island, where the steamship he sailed on had anchored, a young couple, Pauline and Etienne Schyle, whom a friend had recommended to him, were waiting for him.

Mixed-race, “halves,” as the locals used to say. Pauline and Etienne Schill, only 26 and 27 years old, but despite their young age they knew how to receive the older painter with the attention he deserved. Pauline and Etienne drove him around the island for long hours and introduced him to the new landscape. A courageous friendship developed between them and Matisse photographed them a lot, both together and Pauline separately, Pauline whose unique beauty impressed and intrigued him.

Matisse stayed at the Stewart Hotel, facing the harbor, the tallest building in Papeete at the time. From the terrace, the painter studied the lines, shapes, colors, the green of the mountains and the blue of the ocean. He was amazed and thought.

The view of the mountain from the terrace. Papeete is a small colonial town, nothing special, with 3000 inhabitants, nestled under a mountain several thousand meters high, green from top to bottom. The greenery is everywhere, dark, very rich, somewhat similar to that of the thornbushes. Everything seems wonderful to me, the landscape, the trees, the flowers and the people.

Tahiti revealed to the artist a rich repertoire of forms and thus gave him the opportunity to express a new visual language. Every morning, early in the morning, Matisse would go to the gardens of the Bishop's Residence (Les jardins de l'Évêché), where he was amazed by the wonders of the tropical vegetation, its diversity, the flowers, the fruits, the foliage. The jagged leaves of the breadfruit tree, against the blue sky, cut in light or shadow, particularly nourished and enriched his imagination.

Tropical foliage would never leave Matisse again and would populate many of his future works, until the end of his life, in the form of dancing arabesques. “Room with Black Fern” is a famous example, among Matisse’s last paintings before moving to paper cutouts: intense colors in a style that was neo-pouvist, almost pop.

This painting echoes the influence of the local culture of Tahiti on Matisse, which would significantly shape his continued artistic development in the years to come until the end of his life.

Tippe – fabrics embroidered with cut-out motifs

Matisse observes the locals, their daily activities – all so different, from a distance, without disturbing them. He frequently visits the colorful market of Papeete, the largest on the island, where the residents buy fruit, vegetables and fish.

On the edge of the market, where the fabric sellers lived, Matisse discovered, in addition to the prio, the tippe – fabrics embroidered with cut-out motifs, in a method brought to the island by missionary women in the 18th century. While the prio fabrics are used as clothing, the tippe fabrics are intended for decoration – pillows, tablecloths, bedspreads and, the pinnacle of excellence – spectacular wall hangings, real works of art.

The island women adopted the technique and adapted it to the local method of making cloth from rolled tree bark. Generations upon generations, to this day, mothers teach their daughters to cut motifs in different shapes, inspired by nature, plants and animals, from recycled clothes, from any other piece, and embroider them on fabrics of a solid color. The word tifaifai means patchwork, but in a different sense from that of patchwork, in the sense of fabric on fabric. Patchwork, in the sense of attaching pieces of fabric to each other, is also practiced on the island.

About a decade later, Matisse invented the gouache-painted paper cutouts. Like the island women, who cut out fabric, Matisse cut out cardboard paper. The traditional motifs of tippe, vegetation on the land and in the depths of the lagoon, are found in Matisse's works.

The similarity between the paper cutouts and the works of the island women is obvious and striking, but it should be noted that the motifs themselves were already imprinted in Matisse's imagination. Once again, Matisse encountered a foreign/relative culture that made waves in him and helped him draw good water from a deep inner well and thus fulfill hidden desires.

Painting and Cinema Meet at the End of the World, Friedrich Murnau and Henri Matisse

The Polynesian experience held a big surprise: an unexpected meeting with the master of silent film, the German director Friedrich Murnau. After a few weeks, Matisse befriended two film directors, Friedrich Murnau and Robert Flaherty, who were also staying there for a limited time.

The two directors, who lived on the southeastern tip of the island, were filming the final scenes of their joint film “Taboo.” Like Matisse, they are also famous throughout the world. Matisse, a die-hard film buff, admired both of them but preferred to talk to Murnau, who spoke French Like him, Moreno was tired of the background he had found himself in recent years, namely the oligarchy of Los Angeles, and came to Polynesia in search of sublime nature.

A highly educated man, with a particular interest in the arts and a deep knowledge of French painting, Moreno chose spectacular locations to shoot his film, including a tiny coral island covered in coconut trees.

Mornay invited Matisse to live with him for more than a week in a small cabin. The comforts were extremely limited, but Matisse accepted everything with love and was happy. He filled his notebook with sketches, took photographs, secluded himself, and idled away, being careful not to disturb his new friend's work. From time to time, the filmmaker would take a break and photograph his painter friend or invite him to row together in the lagoon. Matisse was no novice: he used to go to the Nice sailing club every morning and practice for an hour.

A year later, in December 1931,France, Matisse watched the film “Taboo” three times. Unfortunately, Murnau did not have the opportunity. On March 11, 1931, a few days before the film’s US premiere, he was killed in an accident in Santa Barbara. The car he was driving crashed into a pole. He was 42 years old when he died.

An unexpected meeting of painting and cinema at the end of the world. Matisse was so moved by Moreau's closeness that he somewhat abandoned painting. At the beginning of his stay in Polynesia, he painted only one painting in which he tried to express something of the emotion that Polynesian nature aroused in him.

The painting did not satisfy him, he called it a “quick sketch” and turned to observing the beauty of the exciting landscape. Matisse feared that he would not be able to express the intense experience in his paintings.

I stop writing to look around me. The mountain and its slopes are laden with coconut trees and behind me the sea, framed by trees, slightly pruned in the Japanese style, adorns it. The white foam of the reef stretches for a kilometer. The light and colors, such as I have never seen before, even though I have lived in the south for years. Immersed in the atmosphere, thrilled by the novelty of all the things I saw without really being aware of it, amazed, stunned, I accumulated and stored up masses of impressions.

Water and sky

Two months after arriving in Polynesia, hungry for more, Matisse continues the adventure to the Tuamotu Islands, a string of low coral loops at sea level, 350 km northeast of Tahiti.

I reached Bataki Island, which was less threatened by the cyclone, and a little further away, Pakarba Island, a piece of coral reef ring.

Water and sky, and that's enough, that is, the simplest thing in the world. The water of the sea is pure as in the days of Genesis.

The sky is also pure, perfectly pure, with no wind to come to discolor it.

A feeling of infinite blue that Matisse translated, eighteen years later, in these two works, a diptych, which merge into each other in a perfect visual synthesis of the Polynesian experience. White birds and fish in water and sky. Matisse looked at the horizon and dived towards the depths.

Blinded by the connection between earth and sky, Matisse experienced and celebrated in religious ecstasy the totality and unity of the universe, thus joining the lineage of those who recounted the ancient myths of the creation of the world from which the first words of language were derived. Like them, the painter marveled at the still waters of the lagoon, remaining open-mouthed in the face of the azure sky: Who? What? Water, sky (Sh+water).

The background squares, in two different colors, conduct a dialogue as if on a piano keyboard. The colors are like sounds, “chords,” Matisse called them, distributed like waves of music, spreading peace and tranquility.

The extensive use of the arabesque form allows the painter to express the curls of underwater vegetation, the sparkle of a reflection on the surface of the water, the elusive shadow of a diver, the curl of a wave, the drift of a cloud. Matisse's arabesques both dissolve and take on form.

The tangle of branches, leaves, flowers he saw in Polynesia, the banana trees, coconut trees, mango trees, breadfruit trees, hibiscus flowers, the magical garden of the depths of the lagoon, in the purgatory of Matisse's memory and art, need wavy lines, pure forms, aesthetic signs. The sensory experience is translated into letters. Between the figurative and the abstract, from the form to the sign. “The importance of an artist is measured by the number of new signs he has introduced, ultimately, into the visual language,” Matisse will declare.

weaving

The two panels, “Polynesia, Sea” and “Polynesia, Sky” exist not only in decoupage form but also in the form of tapestries. At the request of the Director of the National Manufactures, Matisse, in collaboration with Orgia, produced two of his works in wool tapestries. One of them is this diptych, which was produced in eight copies at the Beauvais Manufacture.

Fabrics and weaving were ingrained in Matisse's early childhood. Le Cateau-Cambrésis, the town where he was born and where he founded a museum in 1952, was famous for its thriving textile industry. Matisse's grandparents were weavers, and the young Henri grew up surrounded by the colors and shapes of their wonderful creations.

Thus, memories of the childhood home were woven-cut-glued-woven with those of the sixty-year-old tourist into a tractate of cosmic, infinite, wall-less space, where creatures of the sea and sky float as if in constant motion, dancing for their pleasure. A shared choreography of birds, fish, and oysters. The light blurs the boundary between water and sky, canceling it. The birds float, the jellyfish fly. The colors, the shapes, and the spaces, everything expresses the vibration of life. The carpets are both decorated in a frame reminiscent of the lagoon.

Golden Light Cup

Lagoon, aren't you one of the seven wonders of the painters' paradise? The water is always lukewarm and you enter it easily, sit on a piece of reef and, with the help of a box with a glass bottom, look into it. The color of the water is gray-jade-green, with the bottom, very close, adding shades to it.

Branching corals in a variety of delicate pastel colors, around which schools of small fish, blue, yellow and brown striped, pass. Large trout fish cross the water like giant airships in pitch black, and sharks swim along the bottom.

I submerged my head in the water, transparent against the absinthe of the lagoon, with my eyes wide open, and then, abruptly, I lifted it above the water to stare at the illuminated landscape. The light of the Pacific Ocean, the light of the islands is a deep golden cup, drawing the gaze into it, a light endowed with a special virtue to intoxicate the soul. It was as if the light had stopped forever, as if life had come to a spectacular standstill.

The two panels, “Sea, Oceania,” and “Sky, Oceania,” can be seen at the following links:

• Oceania, Sea, Bayler Foundation, Basel, 1946-1947
• Oceania, Heaven, Bayler Foundation, Basel, 1946-1947

Matisse cuts out a bird and sticks it on the wall, another bird, a third bird, coral, sharks, starfish and sky. Tahiti is derived on the walls between flying fish and diving birds. Sea and sky merge. The vibration passes from form to form. Thus were the paper cutouts born.

No longer a brush running across the canvas but scissors, scissors cutting the cardboard paper in the heart of the paint. A completely different path. The outline of the form emerges, then, from the path of the scissors that gives it a swirling, infectious life force. Before it disappears, the outline, in space, is seemingly hidden but continues its race, the signal for its takeoff being given to it by the grace of the cutting hand. The line continues and continues its path across the surface that becomes a space filled with illuminated transparency. This is the feeling.

We brought the latter forward. Between the two diptychs, “Polynesia” and “Oceania” and the stay on the islands, there is, as mentioned, a separation of more than fifteen years.

Yes, I was really surprised by the unusual nature of the light in the place. It's all a little frightening. There's too much to see. I'm not sure I can do anything. I'm enjoying a peace of mind I've never had before.

The impressions were too strong. Matisse needed all those years to let his memories sink and rest in order to rise and float again.

Let's go back to the chronological sequence. Matisse has commitments and must return to France. On June 15, 1930, he left the Polynesian paradise after a stay of two and a half months to return toNice.

This concludes part three of the article. 

This article is the first in a series of four articles about Henri Matisse.

To read Part D, click on This link.