Page 14 - Studio International - July 1966

Matisse and subject matter / continued

blue, Matisse came closest to the sort of patterning in the background, might have it has no less strength or vitality than
technical treatment associated at the time suggested an unnecessarily pretty solution. another great painting of a woman, which
more with poster design than with painting. Matisse had counteracted any such represents the opposite extreme—De
He abandoned shading altogether in 1935, possibility by using distortion. Although it Kooning's Woman and bicycle. This stark
and this work painted two years later is obvious that all forms are transmuted and violent figure was the result of
represents a further development in this or distorted to a certain degree, the painter rapidly-grasped images of women passing
direction, although the first study for it transformed both hands of the figure into through or appearing momentarily in a
was far more naturalistic, with far fewer extremely exaggerated shapes, and room. De Kooning's woman—powerful,
distortions and the figure placed to the particularly the right hand holding black huge, aggressive, even tragicomic, is no
right of the canvas. It was not unusual for and white beads which has no more grace less than a collage of impressions and
Matisse to start with a more realistic study than an oddly-placed bunch of bananas. trophies like the toothy grin, originally
of the subject and through as many as This strange and powerful caricature of a cut out of a glossy magazine and eventually
perhaps twenty versions reach a solution hand is emphasized further by being placed depicted in oil paint. Perhaps it is helpful
that gave expression more permanently in the centre of the picture and directly to juxtapose Matisse's epitome of serenity
and accurately to his sensation and intent. in line with the calm and implacable with something as violent as De Kooning's
The simplification and the symmetrical head. It becomes the compelling focus of effigy of womanhood in order to realize
ordering of curves, large areas of the composition. and appreciate the power of its impact
saturated colour repeated in different Despite the formal ordering and and its extraordinary intensity. q
parts of the picture, and the tile-like extraordinary delicacy of this painting

Obituaries Ludwig Meidner An exhibition entitled Arlington One: Festival of Visual
Towards the end of March Ludwig Meidner died at the and Sound Poetry is being opened at Arlington Mill,
Jean Arp age of 83 in Darmstadt, Germany. Meidner was little Bibury, near Cirencester, on July 23 by Hans Jandl.
The sculptor, painter, poet Jean Arp (the two names known in England even though he lived, almost four-
suggest a Franco-German cultural tradition and his teen years here. In America he was often described A connexion between art-galleries and bookshops is
place of birth—Strasbourg), who died in June at the as the most typical of all the German Expressionists. traditional abroad, and used to be traditional in
age of 80, made one of the most profound single con- Meidner was born in a small Silesian town which, as England. It is good to see it being revived by a new
tributions to twentieth-century art. He is probably the he put it, had never produced any poet, painter, or bookshop, Indica, in Mason's Yard, Duke Street, St
sole artist to have had the distinction of having been playwright. He went to the Academy in Breslau and James. Their opening show, Indications, consisted
a member of four of the most important European art moved to Berlin in 1905 where he made a poor living largely of works by well-known kinetic artists, in-
movements (Blaue Reiter, Der Sturm, Dada, and doing fashion drawings and illustration. He travelled cluding Soto and Takis.
Surrealism) although he always kept a measure of to Paris where he came under the influence of Manet
detachment in his activities. His work in the field of and the Post-Impressionists and made friends with
art was based on two fundamental notions, i.e. that Modigliani. In 1907 he returned to Berlin and in 1912
illusionistic art is a substitute for nature and therefore helped found a group of painters known as Die
an imitation and, secondly, that nature's creative Pathetiker, which exhibited at the Gallery of Der
force, as a dynamic, is to be taken as an example. Sturm and which was thoroughly Expressionist in its
Amongst his greatest works are the sculptures ideas. Meidner himself at this time was painting a
which he called Concretions, which bear a strong series of cataclysms, distorting and compressing his
relationship to the human figure and are the result of forms and laying on the paint in thick impastos.
what Arp himself called a natural process of con- In August 1939 he fled from Germany, where the
densation and solidification of something that has Nazis had condemned his work as 'degenerate',
grown like a plant, animal, or man. removed pictures by him from public collections, and
had forbidden him to paint. He came to England
Hans Purrmann where, after being interned for one year, he stayed
On April 17 Hans Purrmann died in Basle at the age until 1953. Friends of Meidner say that he was un-
of 86. One of the most considerable German artists of happy in London at first although his wife liked the
recent times, Purrmann was also one of the last English way of life very much. As Meidner grew
painters to have had connexions with Matisse's school slowly to understand England and to feel at home
in Paris. here, so his wife began to long for Germany once
Born in Speyer in 1880, Purrmann studied under again. They returned and finally settled in Darmstadt,
Franz von Stuck at the Munich Academy and in 1906 where Kasimir Edschmidt, one of the founders of
moved to Paris. Here he met Matisse and came under literary Expressionism, still lives.
his influence. They became friends and Purrmann Meidner died after a long period of illness. He was ' Typographic atrocities'
organized and helped to found Matisse's school. In still painting in his old style, marred perhaps by a The practice of printing a photo-engraved block in a
her autobiography Gertrude Stein has a great deal little mannerism, until he was taken to hospital. vivid coloured ink appears to be growing. The conven-
to say about Purrmann, most of it extremely uncompli- Meidner once wrote of his intentions in the following tion of black-and-white we all admit, certain shades of
mentary, but she does admit that it was Purrmann's way: 'The greatest aim of my generation, its most red and brown have also some claim to exist; but to
energy and talents that made the school a success burning desire, its most fervent wish, is nothing more take an ordinary 'process'-block from a painting and
and that he was by far its most dominant personality. than to achieve a way of creating from out of one's print it in emerald green, magenta, violet, or blue, is
Purrmann returned to Germany in 1916, but left again inner being, to retrieve all the faces and melodies nothing short of an outrage upon taste, and if the
after the Nazis had come to power and had forbidden which whisper in the human soul, deep within it, picture be not beneath it, an insult to the artist.
public exhibition of his work on the grounds that it dark, unrecognisable and subconscious... We do not
was 'degenerate'. aim to reflect the superficial aspects of Nature directly On collecting posters
Jedlicka, the Swiss art historian, visited Matisse as and truthfully but rather to mirror that secret part of To collect English posters would be mere childishness
he lay on his death-bed in Nice in 1952. Jedlicka the spirit, the unity which we feel with the primaeval comparable to the treasuring up of postmarks ... If
wanted information about Matisse, of course, but forces of the earth.' there be a grain of truth in Mr Ruskin's dictum that
instead the old man spoke constantly of Purrmann advertising is nowadays the only living art, it is time
and referred to 'Purrmann's modesty, unseemly for a we produced some example in England which would
painter'. Matisse stressed that Purrmann was the only at least escape universal derision.
German painter whom Matisse recognized. from The Collecting of Posters by Charles T. J. Hiatt
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