I followed an expert around the exhibition of “Matisse: In Search of True Painting” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This tour guide was a bit shorter than usual and probably a few decades younger than I had expected. Her pigtails emphasized her playfulness, but her comments noted her seriousness about Matisse, even though she was probably no older than nine.
This child’s acuity is exactly the lens that artists like Matisse would have tried to look through when creating, viewing, and experiencing art. Her attention to the color’s sensation and vibrancy was right on point. She explained that the early Matisse work reminded her of her paint dot markers. Even though she did not know the names of Cezanne, Signac, or Seurat, she could still experience what the artists tried to produce with their techniques. Whether the red dots and blue dots mixed in her vision to create purple was irrelevant. She was experiencing the sensation of painting, the true painting that Matisse strived to create his entire life.
Henri Matisse (1869–1954), an acclaimed painter in France, continually and repeatedly explored his artistic process. He challenged his own paintings by exploring different color and stylistic elements. the Met focuses on Matisse’s progression by displaying his completed canvases as tools and opening up the galleries to the visual experience of the viewer. Unlike numerous other galleries that display many more paintings, this exhibit showed only forty-nine canvases, with up to just four works spread out on each wall. The space enabled the paintings to breathe and speak to each other and to the viewer. This special attention to each canvas is the type of examination that Matisse would have demonstrated in his own studio. Each canvas showcases Matisse’s intention, especially with the help of didactic wall texts.
When the child walked into the second gallery, she was confronted with three larger-than-life canvases of Le Luxe. Standing before three images of a naked woman, she was asked whether the sketch, second, or final version was her favorite. Disregarding their unclothed status, the little girl could not decide. She examined the three compositions and kept telling her mother which colors and lines she preferred from each painting, rather than choosing one in particular. As information provided by the Met states, Matisse “presented his ideas in a radical new way. He had little interest in ‘anatomical exactitude’ and instead sought to convey the essential qualities of his figures.” Matisse paid more attention to the form rather than the anatomy of the woman’s body. I was convinced that the curatorial framework enabled viewers to view the succession of images as a work of art inasmuch as each piece functioned independently. Like the child, I bonded with the image despite any inaccuracies in proportion, scale, and form.
The most impressive part of the exhibit was in the sixth gallery. When turning the corner, the room at first seems disjointed with the rest of the exhibit. Why are there photographs on a pedestal? Why is there a large blue skirt displayed? Why is there only one Matisse painting in the entire room?! In dedicating a gallery to Matisse’s progression of work for painting The Large Blue Dress (1937), the Met reveals the important history during the painter’s search for true painting. The museum information explains that Armenian photographer Matossian was hired to photograph and record Matisse’s painting process. Each photograph renders a different stage in the process of painting his final version. Each stage differs slightly in both the rendering of details and the choice of shapes. Matisse “used the photographs as he worked, comparing them to the evolving painting in order to see whether he had advanced or regressed.” It is especially interesting to note the detail Matisse had originally given to his model’s skirt. The large blue skirt was sewn by his own model and assistant, Lydia Delectorskaya, and is displayed in the room. In making the skirt, Delectorskaya chose Matisse’s favorite shade of blue. And yet, Matisse depicts the skirt in a different shade in the final canvas, and uses mere pencil-like lines to accentuate the cotton lace-trimmed ruffle. After closer observation of the skirt and photographs, the viewer can see the The Large Blue Dress painting through the eyes of the artist.
The exhibition successfully emphasizes the importance of Matisse’s process, not only through the included writings, but also by enabling the viewers to experience it themselves. Matisse had a fervor that poured into his bold and bright paintings. While most may not have the opportunity to view the exhibit through the eyes of a child, every viewer is privy to observe the artistic process with the zest of a painter.
