Customer Reviews

Henri Matisse 1869-1954 - Master Of Colour

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the problem with series that attempt to impose an accessible beginners' format on art and artists is that these things rarely conform to method. the Taschen introductions to great artists are all 96 pages long, dividing the artist's life into significant chronological chapters, following strict biography, and using key paintings to illustrate various points made. this is fine in practice, we've all got to start somewhere, and the series is noted for its refusal to talk down to the reader, its clarity of interpretation, and the bounteous range of miraculously mounted, full-colour reproductions, not just of paintings, but line drawings, lithographs, sketches, studies, woodcuts etc.

The obvious difficulty is not that artists are transcendent and wayward figures who won't fit into a neat grid, but that some artists lived to be considerably older than others. the first book in this series I read was Anna Meseure's 'Auguste Macke', the study of a painter who died when he was only 27. Meseure was able to elaborate each development in Macke's work in detail, and to give a proper treatment of biographical background and its influence on the art, if only on the level of subject matter.

Macke, however, remains a marginal figure. henri Matisse is one of the towering geniuses of 20th century culture. He lived, and painted masterpieces, until he was 85; his life spanned two cataclysmic World Wars, a riot of social and political changes, and almost every aesthetic revolution worth talking about in the last 150 years. given the same amount of space to discuss Matisse as Meseure had with a painter a third his age, Essers' study can't help being a cursory skim, with few revelatory anecdotes (we only learn in the chronology about Matisse's pilgrimmage to the aging Renoir; his theatre designs for Stravinsky; or the visit of Aragon to his sickbed during World War Two - such episodes are surely as important as some given prominence in the book), or, worse, few intimations of the blinding raptures that must have seized Matisse at each new artistic discovery and breakthrough. We learn very little about his relation to his cultural milieu, his tacit rivalry with Picasso, or his overall importance in the history of art; discussion of the work is apolitically formalist. Uncomfortable questions - the obsessiveness of his early year despite his family's poverty; his apoliticism during World War Two - are skimmed over.

None of this really matters. Matisse's work travels surprisingly well in reproduction, especially the later works involving cut-outs, simplified forms and bold colours. the colours throughout are done full bright justice to, so dazzling in fact that reading this book for more than an hour gave me a headache. The rich mix of classics ('Woman with the Hat', 'La Dance', 'Jazz') with the revelatory, less well-known (including spare, geometric, near-abstract views of Notre Dame during World War One) allow us to write our own story of this shamanic artist, whose patrician, Freudian mien concealed the colours and curves of a blazing and boundless inner life.

TASCHEN's "Basic Art" series consists of fairly inexpensive, full-colour introductions to dozens of painters running just under 100 pages each. Though these can be rather variable in quality, this installment dedicated to Henri Matisse is great. Matisse was a "Master of Color", as the book's subtitle goes, and his paintings here are in explosively gorgeous reproduction. The paintings appear in chronological order (not always a given with the "Basic Art" series), which allows the reader to understand at a glance Matisse's gradual stylistic evolution.

Volkmar Essers' text is quite informative. He splits Matisse's life and work into five periods, "In Quest of Pure Colour" 1869-1905, "Realism and Decoration" 1906-1916, "The Intimacy of the Nice Period" 1917-1928, "Beyond Spatial Limits" 1930-1940 and "Matisse's Second Life: an Art of Grace" 1941-1954. His comments on the paintings are insightful and never lost in navel-gazing, drawing the reader's eye to perhaps hitherto unnoticed nuances in the works. Extracts from Matisse's writings appear in the margins, so one can additionally read the painter's own feelings about his work.

The "Basic Art" books are meant to be only introductions, and thus their coverage is a bit superficial. I could complain that the canvases of Matisse's last period are given fairly little space here, but hey, the book has got me hooked on Matisse's painting and I'm going to move on to a more expansive look at his art anyway.

I had recently visited the chapel that Matisse designed for a convent in Vence, France (near Nice.) When I got home I couldn't find a book about it, so I ordered this brief look at Matisse and his art. It does have some of the chapel but it is mainly a valuable and very concise overview of his life and work, with some good pictures.

This is a lovely little book about Matisse. Lots of information and some wonderful pictures of his work. If you are a Matisse lover you should have this little book.

One looks at the works of Matisse and wonders why there is no Noble Prize in Art. He would have been so deserving. The works printed in this book are dazzling in their colors, shapes, lines and proportions. His work will be viewed for many, many years as the masterpieces of a tremendously creative man.