Matisse Monday: Miscellany

{This is the third in a series of Monday posts dedicated to Henri Matisse, part of a self-learning experiment dedicating the month of April to his study. As always, I invite you to take what you like and leave the rest. For the rest of the posts click here.}

I'm taking in so much information during this self-learning experiment that it's hard to choose what to share here and even harder to put it all together into a cohesive post. Hence today's Matisse miscellany, a mish-mash of interesting-to-me morsels gleaned from the mish-mash of books and Websites I've been reading.

 The Dancer, from my 2005 Mandala line art series

Matisse-inspired art without even knowing it!

Et voici, the promised morsels...

Initial attempts at art training foiled. Matisse's initial attempts at art school didn't turn out so well. One of his first teachers at the Académie Julien said he couldn't draw and soon after, Matisse failed an entry exam to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Finally he was noticed by a less stodgy Symbolist painter, Gustave Moreau, who knew a good thing when he saw it and brought him into his studio. The rest is history. The moral of this story? Persist and the right person will come along!

The Cone Collection. Many of Matisse's works were donated to the Baltimore Museum of Art by the Cone sisters, Claribel and Etta. Friends with Gertrude Stein, they met Matisse on a visit to Paris and became fans of his work; throughout his career they collected "42 oil paintings, 18 sculptures, 36 drawings, 155 prints, and seven illustrated books, as well as 250 drawings, prints, and copper plates from the artist’s first illustrated book, Poésies de Stéphane Mallarmé." The Cone collection also includes pieces from other artists like Picasso, Cézanne and Gauguin. For more information check out the Museum's Website.

Blue Nude (Souvenir de Biskra), Matisse, 1907

Albert Barnes and the Barnes Foundation. Again, another important collection of Matisse works and hundreds of other Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and early Modern paintings by folks like Picasso, Cézanne, Degas and Monet - all housed in the US. Located in the Philadelphia area (Merion, PA), the Barnes Foundation hosts a series of galleries and an arboretum; read more about it here. Definitely a must-see if you're in the Philly area!

Multi-Creative. Matisse was a man of many talents: painter, sculptor, illustrator, printmaker, writer... When he got tired of painting he switched to something else. Often his sculptures would become fodder for paintings later on. Evidently creativity builds on creativity.

La Serpentine, Matisse, 1909

Big drawings, big pencil. Finally, I love how Matisse improvised to meet the task at hand. When drawing big images on the studio wall, he created a big pencil by attaching a piece of charcoal to the end of a long stick!

Matisse drawing big, 1950

That's it for today's meli-melo. Stay tuned for another Matisse-related post or two before the month end...

Matisse Monday: It's All About Process

{This is the second post in a series dedicated to Henri Matisse during Matisse Month, a self-learning experiment dedicating the month of April to the study of Matisse. As always, I invite you to take what you like and leave the rest. For the first post click here.}

La Blouse Roumaine, Henri Matisse, 1940

I have no art-making process except maybe the absence of a process.

I seem to function well on intuition and when I go to the table, I "see what comes." Usually when I try to paint something specific it just. doesn't. work. And I scratch my head wondering how the heck others do it?

With this in mind, I particularly enjoyed reading about Matisse's art-making process. Here are four things he did that I'd like to try*:

Reproduce emotion vs. reality: Matisse painted what he saw in front of him not necessarily as reality, but as it made him feel. Whether a still life or a nude, he painted the emotion it evoked within him rather than aiming to reproduce his subject as it was objectively visible to the naked eye.

"I put a bouquet on the table and I'd like, once the painting complete, that a gardener might be able to recognize each variety of flower; but I don't know what happens in the process, they become young girls, dancing."

~ Henri Matisse (quote translated by yours truly)

Use sketches and small scale paintings as precursors to bigger work: Matisse performed "études" - line drawings, colour studies, paper cutouts and sketches - before creating a major work. When working on his dancer series he did hundreds of sketches to study movement and line.

Danseuse, Henri Matisse, 1930-1931

Embrace re-work and practice patience: When painting La Blouse Roumaine (above) Matisse took fourteen photographs of his work in progress over nine months, depicting how he eliminated detail to come up with the essential for this piece. This absolutely floored me, to the point where I may have gotten a bit over-enthused and forced not only my husband, but my colleagues to listen to me describe how incredibly amazing this was. (Sorry guys!)

six of the fourteen photos, from the lovely little French book

Emulate or seek inspiration from the masters: In the beginning Matisse emulated and sought inspiration from masters that came before him like Davidsz de Heem, Chardin and Cézanne. Then he started giving those pieces his own twist. Apparently copies were good business back then too, he sold copies to fatten the art-making coffers!

So to recap...

1. Reproduce emotion vs. reality
2. Use sketches and small scale paintings as precursors to bigger work
3. Embrace re-work and practice patience
4. Emulate or seek inspiration from the masters

I don't expect I'll be tackling all of these immediately, but I do believe that picking these four approaches out of the pack and writing about them here will make them accessible to my creative psyche.

And really, that's what this little learning experiment is all about.

* The main reference for this post is a lovely little book on Matisse and some of his chosen pieces by Anette Robinson. The version I have is in French; I'm not sure if an English version of the book is available.

Matisse Month (A Self-Learning Experiment)

Icare, Henri Matisse, 1943Because I'm a bit of nerd I'm trying a self-learning experiment here this month: I'm dedicating April to the study of Henri Matisse.

Not all of my posts will be about Matisse, but I've decided to give myself a timeframe of one month to learn about someone whose work appeals to me and capture whatever tickles my fancy here for anyone else who may be interested.

Like last year's Photography Month, my focus will not be the technical aspects or critique of Matisse's work. I don't have the expertise for that. What I can offer however are interesting tidbits of information that surprised or inspired me, new-to-me concepts or ideas and how I might try to emulate or use some of them in my own work, and hopefully things that are just plain interesting. As always, I invite you to take what you like and leave the rest!

I have no particular format in mind for sharing the information with you here; I figured I'd just set out on my experiment and see where it leads me. D. suggested "Matisse Mondays", I might play with that.

So why Matisse? A) I like his paintings and I once had a watch with Icare (see pic above) on the faceplate. It was gorgeous. B) There just happened to be two books on him at my tiny library branch, so Matisse it is. I've two more books and a DVD on the way.

PS - Those first two books are in French so I hope nothing gets lost in translation!

OK. Enough preamble. How about I start you off with a few quick facts that caught my attention:

~ Born December 31st, 1869, in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, Nord, France, close to the Belgian border.

~ Studied law, but started painting in his early twenties after receiving art supplies from his mother while recovering from appendicitis. He never went back to law.

~ Experimented with pointillisme early on with Luxe, Calme et Volupté.

~ Participated in a group show with and led a group called les Fauves (wild beasts) at the Salon d'Automne in 1905. More to come on them later.

~ Hung out with the Steins at rue de Fleurus in Paris (Gertrude and her brothers, Leo and Michael), where he met Pablo Picasso. The two became life-long friends.

~ Was a painter, sculptor, printmaker, an illustrator and a collage artist ("papiers collés"). A man of many talents!

~ Created his famous Nus bleus series in 1952, while in his eighties.

~ Died shortly after in 1954 at 84 years of age.

Back with more later, I promise. Stay tuned...