Page 31 - Studio International - July August 1968
P. 31
Baigneuses a la tortue 1908, oil ; 70+ x 86+ in.
City Art Museum of St Joseph, Miss. Gift of Mr and Mrs Joseph Pulitzer Jnr.
Andrew Forge: There are two aspects of Matisse that I find myself
The relevance of curious about, not because I think they are the most important
things to discuss but simply because, of all the material that he
Matisse offers, they seem to suggest possible alternative interpretations
On the one hand there is the most traditional, the most nineteenth-
century aspect of Matisse, that which seems to relate him to Cezanne,
to Rodin, and to the Renaissance tradition : Matisse the draughtsman
A discussion between Andrew Forge, and sculptor; a Matisse whose view of art is essentially based on his
Howard Hodgkin and Phillip King
sense of drawing. Certain types of harmonization, of balance, of
rhythm, certain kinds of form. An artist whose whole intention is to
be related towards some notion of formal harmony. And this I
suppose you could say is the Matisse that is revealed in the figure
drawings, in say a sculpture like La serpentine, or in paintings like
La danse. Well, then quite different from that, somehow separating
itself out, there seems to be another Matisse, who shows his face not
just at one point of his life, but in works like The piano lesson of 1916,
then equally at the very end of his life with the papiers découpés. An
artist who seems to hit upon intimations of scale and of saturated
planes of colour, who seems to introduce a completely new range of
