Page 32 - Studio International - July August 1968

Several of the works reproduced in this article are being shown in the Matisse sensations into painting, very much more direct, and physical.
exhibition with which the new Hayward Gallery on the South Bank will open Howard Hodgkin: Well, I find this a fairly subjective estimate. Perhaps
on 18 July and which will run through until 22 September.
the major interest or quality of Matisse is the fact that he crosses
over between those two poles, that even when his work is at its most
brief and economical he is attempting to make an object which
will exist independently of either extreme.
Phillip King: I do believe there is a difference between certain
aspects of Matisse, but I think what really comes out is the way he
manages to draw benefit from the past and nevertheless take a step
forward into the present, with all the boldness that any young artist
could want to take. And it's interesting to see that at the age of
Le compotier et la cruche de verre c. 1899, oil on canvas; 18 x 21f in. thirty he was still painting in museums, like the Louvre. I think
Washington University, St. Louis, Miss.
this aspect of looking back at history has been a very important
aspect of Matisse, right through his life. I think he always tried to
La leçon de piano 1916, oil on canvas; 8 ft ½ in x 6 ft 11¾ in.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Mrs Simon Guggenheim Fund learn from the past. Essentially I am interested in Matisse not for
the way he lights up the past for me, but for the way he foretells the
future. I believe that his painting today is still very alive, very
avant-garde in the best sense of the word, and it's a sort of painting
which makes a link right back with the past but brings it right
forward to the forefront of where painting is going to go next. A lot
of his contemporaries seem to be much less relevant than he does.
Andrew Forge: His reference back into the past is very different from
Picasso's.
Phillip King: I believe there has been a crisis in the thinking of the
last fifty years, which starts with Cubism. I think Matisse's role for
me is that he's managed to bridge the gap and cross over Cubism
into something else. Possibly he owes his inspiration much more to
what came before Cubism, and not to Picasso's or Braque's approach.
Howard Hodgkin: But wouldn't you agree that he made use of Cubism,
without in any sense subscribing to the kind of system that it sug-
gested? I think he used the physical ingredients of Cubism in certain
of his pictures, as in the Bathers by the river, without feeling that it
was an intellectual system that was valid for further paintings or
a specific solution for depicting certain forms on a flat surface. But
it didn't stop him making use of forms which helped him to add to
his grammar of forms.
Andrew Forge : Do you mean he didn't see Cubism as a way of making
a completely new kind of picture?
Howard Hodgkin: No, I don't think he did at all. I think he saw it
simply as another kind of form-painting, which to him would coexist
with a great many other sorts. Shortly before he became aware of
Cubism there was a very big exhibition of Persian painting in Paris,
which though it can't be directly connected with particular pictures
of his, certainly had a great influence on his use of colour for the rest
of his life. And I think that to him those two kinds of physical objects
had the same sort of identity.
Andrew Forge: Cubism and Persian painting?
Howard Hodgkin: They were both things he could use. All his life I
think he was very suspicious of academic or intellectually-based
system-painting.
Andrew Forge: Who are the artists who have seized material from
Matisse in the last fifteen years ?
Howard Hodgkin: I think on the whole it's yet to come, because his
extraordinary independence has probably yet to be recognized.
Among American painters probably Ellsworth Kelly was the first to
take one specific aspect and use it. I think he misunderstood it
because he used it in a way which I think would have been anathema
to Matisse himself. I think he owes very much to him.
Phillip King: I think really that American painting owes most to
Pollock. Matisse, although he was an influence, wasn't that much of
an influence; not as seminal as Pollock. Matisse could be a rallying-
point for painting in the future, when I think he'll seem much more
isolated in the art of the last 20 years than he does at the moment.
Andrew Forge: I suppose what I was expecting you to say was that it
would be impossible to imagine a Washington/Greenberg-type