FILMS, MUSIC, FEATURES, SPORTS, FASHIONS SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1955 CHANGING TECHNIQUES: AFW .11 .9". [gLi it~gutn &tif THE SUNDAY MAGAZINE ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN PAGE ON AV*& A r Steady Growth Seen in Matisse Works CHAPEL OF THE ROSARY OF THE DOMINICAN NUNS OF VENCE, PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS MATISSE'S STAINED GLASS WINDOWS AND ST. DOMINIC. By FRANK M. LUDDEN Instructor in Fine Arts fHENRI MATISSE was preparing to cele- brate his eighty-fifth birthday when he died last November 3. Visitors, who have recently seen him at Nice, have re- ported that the old painter was still bur- geoning with plans for a new series of drawings, new sculptures and pictures. On the day of his death he had been working on a large decorative picture, exuberent in style and color, using a special technique of cut-out and pasted papers which he has developed these last years. The vitality and continued inventive- ness of Matisse is all the more remark- able since for the last decade he has been an invalid, confined very largely to his villa at Vence and to his apart- ment on the hillside above Nice. He had equipped his bedroom to double as his studio and, it seems, he found it necessary to work mostly from his bed. Yet under these conditions he managed to produce an abundance of drawings, book illustrations, his "cut-out" pictures and even a number of oil paintings of characteristic richness and energy. His major project during the last dec- ade has been, of course, the much publi- cized chapel for the Dominican Sisters of his adopted town of Vence. In every re- spect this chapel is Matisse's personal monument, Not only did he provide funds for the project-the painter was comfortably wealthy-but he undertook to design ti1e work down to the last detail of the fur- nishina and the clerical garments. The ceramic pictures which decorate the wals of the chapel were executed from his full-cale drawing. He studied out the design for the stained glass win- dows, using table models of the lapel to calculate the shifting effects of ligsha and color. He even modeled the crucifix for the altar. When the chapel was completed in 1951, Matisse wrote that he regarded it as his masterwork, "the result of my entire active life" and "the ultimate gali of a whole life of work." NIATISSE'S candidness concerning the success of his chapel seems to be by now generally recognized. The first criti- cal reactions were inclined to be skep- tical. The work while admittedly containing all of Matisse's science of decoration ap- peared on initial view somewhat ungainl and superficial in conception, (This wa very much my own impression when I saw the work in 1950 in its partially completed state and in the models.) However, even the critics inclined to be unsympathetic to Matisse and to his art have come around to an appreciation of the purity and the expressive power of the chapel. One reluctant critic was mov- ed to say, "Never has Matisse seemed to me so young." Actually, the qualities of youthfulness have always pervaded Matisse's art; they seem to be intimately bound up with the wellsprings of his talents. Picasso, his by no means always friendly rival in emi- nence and prestige, once remarked that "he was born with the sun in his stom- ach." This off-hand and cryptic statement goes very directly to the point; Matisse's art has been a continued manifestation of radiance. However, his style has varied over the sixty some years of his career, one fac- tor has remained central-the power of color to transform and enhance. As a young man Matisse' appetite for color led him, literally and figuratively, from the gloom of the Ecole des Beaux Arts to- ward a revolutionary new style of paint- ing, The boldness and spontaneity of his early experiments earned for him, and his associates at the time, the title of "Les Fauves" and this title, given first as derogatory criticism, Matisse still accepts with pleasure. CERTAINLY there has remained a "wildness" about Matisse's color, Aware of his appetites and gifts, Matisse has submitted himself to a prolonged and laborious apprenticeship and over the years has attained a knowledge of color unrivaled in modern art. Yet his science is not one that is rea- soned out. There is in it no specific law of optics 'or of the actions of color complementaries as in the painting of Seurat and the Impressionists. Matisse's approach is direct and in- tuitive. He tests the pigments, the pat- terns, sometimes giving months to ex- perimentation and readjustments, but the tests are those of his acute sensibili- ties. Confronted with the "record of pro- gress" of some of his pictures, we are challenged to follow the course of his additions and rejections; invariably we find that he simplifies and intensifies his color schemes. He seems to be committed to excesses of brilliance. Yet, at the end of-and as the result of-these labors, the pictures shine with the clarities of a spring morning and the spirit of sparkling wines. The "rediscov- ery of instinct," as one poet noted in Matisse's painting, has resulted not in an appearance of excess but rather in dis- cipline, purity and lyricism. Perhaps the real reason for this lies-- not in any inherent qualities of Matisse ' style-but in his personality. Matisse's life has been entirely dedicated to paint- ing. As a man lae was deliberate, retiring and austere; if there were any human dramas in his life, they have not com- plicated his painting. He remained aloof from politics- and the shifting nistory of the last halt-cen- tury has sca;"ely made an impression on his work. With what now seems a for- midable power-of-will, he has concen- trated on his artistic talents and th problems which they have presented. T IS perhaps somewhat revealing of Matisse's personality-but it is also typical of modern art in general-that the artistic problems which concerned him were largely problems of form-of color, line, pattern and composition- rather than problems of content. The traditional motifs of French paint- ing have for him remained sufficient. The female form, flowers, the still-life or the open window are subjects which possess the basic charm, order and luminosity which Matisse could use as a point of de- parture for his researches in formal and lyrical values. It was said of Cezanne that he spent all his life painting different versions of the same picture. The same might be said of Matisse, for one of his first major works was the ambitious and admittedly awkward "Joy of Life" (1906). This picture, now at the Barnes Col- lection near Philadelphia, was in effect a preliminary statement of both Matisse's expressive aims and his characteristic artistic methods. Since this youthful picture the painter has, at various stages of his development, and one after another, exploited its sal- ient qualities. The flowing, eynamic line emerges as the key element in his work around 1910 and again in the middle-twenties. The simplifications of form again preoccupied Matisse during the years of the first World War when under the influence of the Cubists his art became as nearly ab- stract as he has ever allowed it. Such separate preoccupations were course, always linked with the prolem of color and the problem of the deco a tive organization of the picturas a whole. SeeNOTE, Page 6 MATISSE IN NICE GARDEN, 1951 .rUr 0RAIT, 59, mi 5INTH STATENS MUSEU M.COPENHAGEN JOY OF LIFF (JOIE DE VIVRE) IN THE HARNES FOUNDATION AT MERION, PA.