Page 50 - Studio International - July-August 1969

could satisfy in sculpture both emotional needs huge calves and huger feet, and inside the
and a drive towards three-dimensional order arms. The implied 'sculptural' quality of the
no longer available in painting. original lies in its massive bulk: in the sculp-
A great number of Matisse's sculptures from ture this has been transformed into the
1901 onwards were made, not directly from articulation of space by the marvellously taut
the model, but using a painting, drawing or and sure three-dimensional 'S' of the sculp-
photograph as a point of departure. He found ture's axis.
in this way a freedom to develop form in It has been pointed out that the proportions of
sculpture using the figure as a visual key, to be the upper centre figure in the final version of
recognized in terms of overall pattern or pos- The dance of 1910 are close to those of The
ture, rather than defined in terms of real or serpentine (the posture is almost an exact
ideal anatomy. Moreover the kinds of distor- inversion of the sculpture's5). It is the most
tion that Matisse evolved in painting, the un- sculpturally worked out of the figures, per-
rolling and stretching of figure volumes up haps disturbingly so, but in the sketches of the
to the picture plane, the use of foreshortening previous year there is nothing about this
and changes in proportion derived from per- figure in particular to suggest its final develop-
spective, were fed back into the sculpture to ment. This may give some indication of the
create a vocabulary for the expressive restruc- kind of dialogue in the development of form
ture of the figure that could have been arrived between Matisse's sculpture and painting.
at by no other means. The possibilities opened Up to the time of his first attempt at sculpture
3
Head of a faun 1907 up by the sculptural development of these in the round, in 1899, Matisse's main subjects
Bronze. Height 5¼ in.
flat-surface devices in turn suggested new in painting had been landscape, interior and
4
Reclining nude II 1927 ways of structuring the figure in painting. still-life. Subsequently the figure became his
Bronze. Height 11 in. The serpentine, one of the most striking and ori- central preoccupation: and the years of his
5 ginal of Matisse's sculptures, may serve as most intense activity in sculpture also saw the
Two regresses 1908
Bronze. Height 18½ in. an example of this process at work. It was production of a series of large-scale decorative
made when the artist was at Collioure in 1907, paintings from which elements of landscape or
and being unable to find a model to pose for specific background detail were progressively
material and process in which sculptors have him there, used as a starting point for the work eliminated, until, in terms of drawing, figures
found a challenge or a stimulus Matisse seems one of the conventional poses in a book of alone served to articulate the picture surface
to have been impatient. Had a modelling `artist's' photographic nude studies (entitled —Le luxe (1907-1908), Bathers with a turtle
material then existed (it does not exist now) Mes Modèles'4). The model in the original is (1908), The dance, and Music (1908-1910).
which combined the plasticity of clay with the a solid, even portly, young woman, depicted There is clearly a correspondence between
adaptability, internal structure strength and fully frontally leaning with her left elbow on a sculpture and painting in this period that goes
permanence of steel—in other words a pillar, and her left leg crossed over her right. deeper than the relationship between the
material as neutral and as capable as the The transformation in the sculpture is amaz- poses and distortions of certain depicted and
canvas was for colour—things might have ing: from the stodgy and unconvincing pos- modelled figures. It would seem that the
been different. As it was, he was restricted in ture of the original Matisse has constructed a physical experience of handling volume
size in order to maintain formal control and new human anatomy, a body made of line— Matisse gained from sculpture gave him the
immediate realization of his feelings in the in the sense both of a drawn line and of rope— confidence to use the figure as the structure of
most plastic material available. Matisse's rather than of implied flesh and bone. In the painting itself. In these large paintings—
originality lies in the use to which he put order to preserve a uniform emphasis the figures are life-size, or larger—Matisse
sculpture, rather than in the extension of the throughout the figure the proportions of the developed a way of drawing the body that has
sculpture tradition per se, in terms of imagery, original are reversed—where she is broad the only a referential relation to the conventional
structure or material. In general he came to sculpture is attenuated : there seems to be a anatomy and proportion, and which gives the
use sculpture to recapture the sensuous experi- kind of reverse perspective operating from the strongest sensations of 'local volume' without
ence of volume that was increasingly denied tiny waist up to the large neck and normally disturbing the general flat design of the sur-
him by the demands of the flat surface; he proportioned head, and downwards to the face. These paintings seem to me, together