Page 51 - Studio International - July-August 1969

with The back relief series, to come closer to importance of every part. Nonetheless it is the curiously hesitant and inconsistent quality
the tradition of monumental figure sculpture expectedness, the traditionalism of the for- that is deceptive of its real value. Seen in the
than anything else Matisse did; but both the mat of the Jeanette heads for example, which context both of his own major effort in
paintings and reliefs are essentially drawings: gives such impact to the distortions of the painting, and in the development of sculpture
that is to say, relations of shape and propor- last three in the series. This distortion is not from Rodin to the present day the work takes
tion are developed and explored, by line or schematic or conceptual, as with Picasso's on an exceptional significance.
modelling, but always in relation to a surface cubist and surrealist treatments of the same I believe we are now at the end of a period in
with defined boundaries, to an illusion of theme: it derives from the eye, from the sculpture during which modernism was
total three-dimensionality rather than the artist's observation of the model and of the identified with 'making' rather than 'seeing' :
thing itself. result of the process of reconstruction of his this era was initiated by Brancusi and others
Whereas in the paintings the experience of sensations. The eye picks out those elements in reaction to Rodin, and given impetus by
volume is necessarily dominantly visual, in which the hand has intuitively simplified, Cubism which indeed turned painting itself
the sculpture Matisse seems to have wavered `the essentials', and progressively isolates and into a dominantly 'making' process. Brancusi,
between a mode essentially tactile in form, exaggerates them. The arbitrariness and Picasso, Laurens, Lipchitz, Arp, the pre-war
mostly smaller pieces which one feels could strangeness of these heads when seen sepa- Giacometti, Calder, Pevsner, Gabo, Gonza-
have been made in the hand and squeezed or rately gains point when one realizes the lez, David Smith—all of these were using
pinched into shape by the fingers (such as degree of perceptual objectivity and con- materials and processes, whether new or
The head of a faun and Nu debout très cambre in tinuity involved; in contrast to the ordinari- traditional, to realize conceptions. The
the present exhibition, among the many small ness of his point of departure, the radical stimulus and resistance of the material did
heads and figures of the 1904-1910 period, disrespect which Matisse had for conventions much to form the idea as it emerged, and
and, notably, Matisse's last sculptures, the of finish and completeness in sculpture gives once made, the idea exists in and through the
Seated nude of 1949 and Katia of 1950 which enormous power to each state as a provisional, structure of a specific material, as a fabri-
seem to have been made entirely through but in itself final, architecture of his sensa- cated, autonomous object, whatever degree
and for the hands) : and those sculptures tions. of reference there might be to reality. But for
which are more strongly visual in structure, Matisse decided early that in sculpture, Matisse, material is neutral, except insofar
however tactile in execution, usually having movement should be expressed not through the as it is plastic. His sculpture is without image
a strong single view, from and around which figure, as with Rodin, in terms of the illusion and without concept, since these factors are
the sculpture is built: such as The Madeleine I of the figure moving, but in the figure. The taken care of by the use of traditional motifs
(the pose is almost identical with the painted difficulty is that in the portrait bust and and our own instinctive recognition of the
Blue nude study of the same year, 1901, in the simple, static studio poses that Matisse structure of the human body. Within this
Tate). The Two negresses (as with The Serpen- favoured for the figure the front of the head or given conceptual framework he could work
tine, taken from a photographed model), the figure corresponds with the front of the sculp- in a way that was profoundly free and ab-
Decorative figure of 1908, and the large Seated ture. Matisse displaced this obvious frontality stract, the stimulus and limitation lying not
nude of 1922-1925. The difference is between in the Jeanette series (compare its freedom in the material as against the idea, but in his
form given by the hand : and form given by and inventiveness with the later strongly perception and knowledge of the subject,
the eye, as in painting, from a major view— the frontal Henriette series, in which the develop- enlarged by a tremendous confidence and
general conception (and probably the actual ment seems more a progression in style than resource in its two-dimensional representa-
armature) being fixed from the start: within in perception) : and The serpentine is a good tion.
this conception Matisse organizes and modi- example of how he handled the problem in His achievement in sculpture lies not so much
fies masses arid planes with his hands, knife the standing figure. However it was in the in the realization of masterpieces but in the
and modelling tools. In general there is a reclining figure that Matisse found the most exploitation for sculpture of possibilities pre-
visual rationality and a detached control of satisfying solution : the reclining figure need viously only accessible in painting. Today,
sensation in these sculptures that distinguishes not support itself by any but the most rudi- the relative availability and plasticity of
them from the immediate tactility of the mentary anatomical structure: the problems materials for large-scale sculpture, the chal-
smaller pieces. of implied balance and muscular tension in lenge of making sculpture that works directly
In the case of most of the 'visual' sculptures the figure are avoided : the characteristic on the spectator's sensations of his own body
the subject (head, conventional figure pose) twist (Matisse's 'arabesque') can be the and the space surrounding it, has created a
and the actual articulation of the surrounding function of the sculpture as a whole, not of situation in which the example of the sculp-
space by the sculpture itself, is unexciting: the the pose (as with the standing figure). The ture of Matisse, a sculpture based on percep-
interest is internal, and an appreciation of recumbent posture he developed has no tion rather than conception and fabrication,
what is happening in the sculpture depends on dominant front or back (though the strong may well become increasingly important. q
a reading through and around the main visual verticality of the raised arm in the 1907 ver-
axis. In this respect the experience of the sion does tend to make a three-quarter view *to 12 July
sculpture is that of a painting: the spectator from the left the most emphatic) —in all, the 1 There have been very few studies exclusively of
Matisse's sculpture. By far the most ambitious and exten-
distances himself from the sculpture, reads it release from anatomical structural problems sive, Alfred Ellen's four-part essay in Artforum, Septem-
from a major view, and disregards the mo- allows Matisse to invent, to use shape ex- ber—December 1968, documents all the work at length.
delled base or support as only constituting a pressively in a new synthesis of the parts of the However, it lacks a coherent thesis and includes much
comparative material of doubtful relevance.
`frame', of no particular importance except body. I feel that it is in this group of sculp- The best study to date is Hilton Kramer's concise and
insofar as they present and isolate the main tures that Matisse comes closest to his perceptive essay in the Boston Museum Journal, 1966.
interest of the work. This assumption that the achievement in painting: that the last two 2 Kramer.
3 Elsen.
spectator is prepared to look at the sculpture in the series especially are the most complete, 4 I am indebted to Mme Margaret Duthuit for this and
the way the artist intends him to, the taking economical, and three-dimensionally resolved other interesting material on her father's sources and
work-methods.
for granted of so many of the 'props' of tradi- products of his sculptural effort.
5 The reference is to Jean Guichard-Meili, Matisse,
tional sculpture, perhaps sets Matisse apart Nonetheless it is not in any one piece or group p. 168.
especially from contemporaries who were of pieces that his contribution to sculpture [I have to thank Victor Waddington for sponsoring
my research into Matisse's sculpture, and Sidney Geist
asking radical questions about the sculpture can be essentialized. Matisse's sculpture, seen
for reading my manuscript and making valuable
as object, its autonomy: the necessity and in toto and apart from his painting, has a criticism.—W.T.]