Lot Essay
By 1912, the daring innovations which resulted from Matisse's determination to produce "an art of balance, of purity, of serenity" and which produced such masterpieces as La danse (Museum of Modern Art, New York) and La musique (The Hermitage Museum, St, Petersburg) were also beginning to elicit the suggestion from critics that Matisse's art was merely decorative and hardly intellectual. At the same time he was still being described as a revolutionary by American critics, one of whom declared of the works which he exhibited at the infamous Armory Show in 1913: "Everything tells of a studied brusqueness and violence. It is essentially epileptic."
Whether Matisse was reacting to criticism or had simply exhausted the possibilities of the luminous sun-struck colors that he had imbibed in Morocco, there can be no doubt that as "the war to end all wars" loomed across Europe, Matisse entered an incredibly fertile period of abstraction and experimentation. He compounded the tremendous confidence of his line and the profound clarity of his color with a highly idiosyncratic dialogue incorporating structural austerity and a cubist use of space.
Les tulipes was probably painted in Matisse's Paris studio on the Quai St. Michel in the spring of 1914 (fig. 1). It is perhaps the brightest of a series of relatively dark paintings, the genesis of which could be the hieratic Portrait de Mme. Matisse (The Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg) of late 1913 and which culminated with the hauntingly minimalist Porte-fenêtre à Collioure (fig. 2).
A great admirer of Cézanne throughout his life, Matisse now, at the age of forty-five, was prepared to grapple with the fracturing of space which represented the Cubist debt to Cézanne and which preoccupied the avant-garde in this pre-war period. In some respects Matisse had been eclipsed by the Cubists, although his personal dialogue with Picasso at this time was close and frequent. In 1952 Matisse reminisced:
Our differences were amicable. Sometimes, strangely, our points of view met. Picasso and I were in one another's confidences. We mutually gave one another a great deal in those exchanges. There is no question we benefited from one another... Ultimately, you know, I was very close to the Cubists. ("Henri Matisse interviewed by André Verdet", in J. Flam, ed., Matisse: A Retrospective, New York, 1988, p. 152)
Matisse felt that to embrace Cubism would have been to contradict many of his artistic ideas, but he freely acknowledged that Cubism "brushed against me, exactly. It was written about some of my compositions of the period that they were para-cubist." Les tulipes, in particular, appears to be the perfect amalgam of Matisse's passion for color-as-energy and color-as-light (the flowers and the vase) with a fathomless deep space described by precise horizontals and diagonals that had hitherto appeared in such a weightless manner only in Cubist compositions. The tall figure of the vase appears to sit dead center but it actually favors the right side, although this is cunningly disguised by the dramatic interior surrounding it. This glowing green ground is indeed mysterious, and as in some of the most memorable abstract works of this period we have few clues to the exact relationship between the object and its environment. Perhaps the vase is perched on the very edge of a green baize table in front of a door just slightly ajar. Ultimately, however, attempts to identify the Cubist elements in this work or even the narrative of the image itself are blind alleys. In Les tulipes Matisse is asking us to look beyond the image and beyond the style:
In fact, over the past few months Matisse had invented many new formulas... None was meant to represent a style per se: all share imagery that reflects a search for an absolute, along with the assumption that an absolute can be realized only once. Thus, for all the extraordinary formal invention of these pictures, none reflects a desire to perfect a pictorial language. Quite its opposite: since the absolute that Matisse was seeking was a spiritual rather than a stylistic notion, he felt free to search it through any pictorial means at his disposal." (J. Flam, op. cit., 1986, p. 380)
Matisse's ability to juggle objects in space and so alter their essential meaning is strikingly demonstrated by comparing the vase in Les tulipes with a virtually identical object, Le pot d'étain, circa 1917 (fig. 3). The canvases are almost the same size; if one removes the cap and handle from the pewter jug in Le pot d'étain, one has an image identical in every respect to the vase in Les tulipes, including the play of reflected light on the twisting filigree. And yet what a difference! The pewter jug is stolid but almost recessionary, upstaged by the tray of fruit before it as well as the purple drapery behind. Although it occupies the center of the composition, it proclaims its modesty in most respects, albeit with charm. In Les tulipes, however, the vase is ennobled, majestic and pivotal; it rivets the eye despite the blazing red and yellow tulips that ascend from it. Matisse takes a humble object of elementary design and elevates it, with no false flattery, to a state of absolute purity and simplicity that owes nothing to school or style. Discussing Les tulipes, Jack Flam has written:
Another still life done at this time, Tulips is painted in yet another stylistic mode... Despite Tulips' apparent modesty, it was one of seven 'recent' works by Matisse reproduced in the May 15, 1914 issue of Les Soirées de Paris to welcome him back to the ranks of the avant-garde. (Ibid., p. 386)
(fig. 1) Matisse and his wife in the artist's studio, May, 1913
(fig. 2) Henri Matisse, Porte-fenêtre à Collioure, 1914
Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris
(fig. 3) Henri Matisse, Le pot d'étain, circa 1917
Baltimore Museum of Art (The Cone Collection)
Whether Matisse was reacting to criticism or had simply exhausted the possibilities of the luminous sun-struck colors that he had imbibed in Morocco, there can be no doubt that as "the war to end all wars" loomed across Europe, Matisse entered an incredibly fertile period of abstraction and experimentation. He compounded the tremendous confidence of his line and the profound clarity of his color with a highly idiosyncratic dialogue incorporating structural austerity and a cubist use of space.
Les tulipes was probably painted in Matisse's Paris studio on the Quai St. Michel in the spring of 1914 (fig. 1). It is perhaps the brightest of a series of relatively dark paintings, the genesis of which could be the hieratic Portrait de Mme. Matisse (The Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg) of late 1913 and which culminated with the hauntingly minimalist Porte-fenêtre à Collioure (fig. 2).
A great admirer of Cézanne throughout his life, Matisse now, at the age of forty-five, was prepared to grapple with the fracturing of space which represented the Cubist debt to Cézanne and which preoccupied the avant-garde in this pre-war period. In some respects Matisse had been eclipsed by the Cubists, although his personal dialogue with Picasso at this time was close and frequent. In 1952 Matisse reminisced:
Our differences were amicable. Sometimes, strangely, our points of view met. Picasso and I were in one another's confidences. We mutually gave one another a great deal in those exchanges. There is no question we benefited from one another... Ultimately, you know, I was very close to the Cubists. ("Henri Matisse interviewed by André Verdet", in J. Flam, ed., Matisse: A Retrospective, New York, 1988, p. 152)
Matisse felt that to embrace Cubism would have been to contradict many of his artistic ideas, but he freely acknowledged that Cubism "brushed against me, exactly. It was written about some of my compositions of the period that they were para-cubist." Les tulipes, in particular, appears to be the perfect amalgam of Matisse's passion for color-as-energy and color-as-light (the flowers and the vase) with a fathomless deep space described by precise horizontals and diagonals that had hitherto appeared in such a weightless manner only in Cubist compositions. The tall figure of the vase appears to sit dead center but it actually favors the right side, although this is cunningly disguised by the dramatic interior surrounding it. This glowing green ground is indeed mysterious, and as in some of the most memorable abstract works of this period we have few clues to the exact relationship between the object and its environment. Perhaps the vase is perched on the very edge of a green baize table in front of a door just slightly ajar. Ultimately, however, attempts to identify the Cubist elements in this work or even the narrative of the image itself are blind alleys. In Les tulipes Matisse is asking us to look beyond the image and beyond the style:
In fact, over the past few months Matisse had invented many new formulas... None was meant to represent a style per se: all share imagery that reflects a search for an absolute, along with the assumption that an absolute can be realized only once. Thus, for all the extraordinary formal invention of these pictures, none reflects a desire to perfect a pictorial language. Quite its opposite: since the absolute that Matisse was seeking was a spiritual rather than a stylistic notion, he felt free to search it through any pictorial means at his disposal." (J. Flam, op. cit., 1986, p. 380)
Matisse's ability to juggle objects in space and so alter their essential meaning is strikingly demonstrated by comparing the vase in Les tulipes with a virtually identical object, Le pot d'étain, circa 1917 (fig. 3). The canvases are almost the same size; if one removes the cap and handle from the pewter jug in Le pot d'étain, one has an image identical in every respect to the vase in Les tulipes, including the play of reflected light on the twisting filigree. And yet what a difference! The pewter jug is stolid but almost recessionary, upstaged by the tray of fruit before it as well as the purple drapery behind. Although it occupies the center of the composition, it proclaims its modesty in most respects, albeit with charm. In Les tulipes, however, the vase is ennobled, majestic and pivotal; it rivets the eye despite the blazing red and yellow tulips that ascend from it. Matisse takes a humble object of elementary design and elevates it, with no false flattery, to a state of absolute purity and simplicity that owes nothing to school or style. Discussing Les tulipes, Jack Flam has written:
Another still life done at this time, Tulips is painted in yet another stylistic mode... Despite Tulips' apparent modesty, it was one of seven 'recent' works by Matisse reproduced in the May 15, 1914 issue of Les Soirées de Paris to welcome him back to the ranks of the avant-garde. (Ibid., p. 386)
(fig. 1) Matisse and his wife in the artist's studio, May, 1913
(fig. 2) Henri Matisse, Porte-fenêtre à Collioure, 1914
Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris
(fig. 3) Henri Matisse, Le pot d'étain, circa 1917
Baltimore Museum of Art (The Cone Collection)