Matisse: Radical Inventions, 1913 – 17.
Exhibition at The Art Institute of Chicago
This writing is about the artistic intensions, propositions, and the results or solutions achieved by Matisse during the said period. Summation of these inventions are best presented in the painting titled ‘Bathers by River,” a 12 feet wide 1916 canvas.
Bathers by the River
Matisse’s artistic intensions in this canvas seems to achieve an integration of:
His hitherto discovered pictorial space consisting of projections and recessions of the flat surfaces, especially through colors.
His love for the arabesque of free yet knitted rhythms on the flat surface.
Cubists’ representation of dimensions integrated with the flat surface by means of split representation and disorientation of planes, the lessons learned from African Primitive art.
In fact, he was striving to achieve a visual diction through integrating styles of expressions (as words), what he termed as ‘methods of modern constructions,’ a clue which was fully exploited by Picasso in paintings around “Guernica.”
Coming to the canvas, Matisse divided it in vertical bands with the stark braking of the canvas in two halves with central line. This stark division is melted down with a rhythm of subtle proportions of bands, controlled tensions of tones and colors, and, arabesque of foliage lines that is covering the frontal plane. The black right band controls the recession of the viridian colored left band. The mysterious hook like shape hooks the right halve with the left one. The head of the hook, which is a repetition of the foliage shape, is read as ’snake’ too, giving the canvas an archaic aroma. The four figures presented in canvas in a rhythm across, are modulated on cubistic aesthetics. More than half of the canvas has Matisse-gray with the streaks of light pink creates a languorous mood of the lonely riverbank and the eerie- sensuality of the nude figures.
[...] my reflections on Matisse http://www.omexpressions.com/2010/matisse-radical-inventions/ [...]