Page 36 - Studio International - September 1970

figure into his art, and sculpture was the most and strange forward lean in profile; but a poses originated from a popular album of
direct way to approach the figure; he needed subtle architectural energy from the piling-up artists photographs Matisse used when he
the continuity, the prolongation of work, in of related forms on slightly displaced axes had no models available at Collioure. It
his first two main sculpture projects, The (foreshadowing the Jeannette series III—V) seems significant to me that in the case of
Jaguar, after Barye, and The Serf, to provide and the two male (and masculine) figures, all three of these great sculptures Matisse
psychological stability at a time when his The Serf and The Ecorché, in which Matisse was working from a two-dimensional source
ideas on painting were changing rapidly; he confronts, for the first and last time, the overt giving him a total freedom to develop the
wanted the experience of physical volume, of muscularity of the male nude. The problem sculpture in volume and disposition accord-
actually making light and shade in an object,6 was almost insoluble—to deal vigorously and ing to his own invention, his sense of the
to supply him with an experience increasingly inventively with volume without evoking architecture of the parts. One notes also that
hard to re-capture in painting once he had a rhetorical physicality—and Matisse in future in all these three pieces there is no prob-
accepted the historical tendency toward flat- found in the female nude a far more satisfac- lem of balance, the stability of each piece
ness initiated by Impressionism. Finally, tory container for the abstract disposition of being assured by the horizontal pose, the
sculpture offered for him at this time an area shape. locking of two figures, the supportive pillar.
for the expression of feelings of a violence and The legs, having no technically structural
intensity never to reappear so nakedly in his III role, are freed to become equivalent in
work. The first group of sculptures Matisse By the time Matisse had worked through this expressive power to the arms. The head
made, in the years 1899-1903, The Jaguar, group of sculptures he had found his way in becomes one in a series of lumps—shoulder,
The Serf, The Bust of an Old Woman, The Study painting with the final release of colour from breasts, buttock, calf. In each case the figure
of a Foot, The Horse, The Ecorché, Madeleine I description in the Collioure landscapes of as such is unimportant except as a motif: the
and II, display a range of expressive subject 1905. Simultaneously there occurred the ferocity of expression randomly displayed in
and treatment unique in his art. In this first vision of an ambitious and synthetic decora- the earlier sculptures is concentrated into an
stage Matisse was all over the place in tive art, drawing on both his experience of expressive but quite abstract theme that
sculpture; I don't now think that he ever, dealing with volume and the figure in sculp- characterizes each piece : in the Reclining
even when engaged on The Serf, entertained ture and of the new possibilities opening up Figure, an explosive energy and thrust, in
the possibility of making a contribution to the in the use of colour—Luxe, Calme et Volupté, tension with the horizontality and relaxation
tradition of monumental sculpture re-estab- 1904-5, The Joy of Living 1905-6, Le Luxe of the pose : in the Two Negresses the locking
lished by Rodin—his sculpture has a mainly 1907, Bathers with a Turtle of 1908, The Dance and interlacing of the figures at one level and

11
Reclining Nude II 1927
Bronze
Courtesy Mme Georges Duthuit
12
Reclining Nude III c. 1929
Bronze
Height 18 cm.
Coll: Museum of Art, Baltimore
is
Upright Nude 1904
Bronze
Height 22.7 cm.
Courtesy Mme Georges Duthuit

private function, especially at this time. All and Music of 1910. Matisse clearly put his the designing of the anatomy of both figures
these early sculptures are of great and differ- private struggle with sculpture to good use in to the reinforcement of this effect; in The
ent interest, pointing to possibilities only a this great succession of public and monu- Serpentine the transformation of volume into
few of which Matisse was to realize, but all in mental paintings. Contemporary with them line, so modulated as to re-invoke volume, of
various ways, uneasy and incomplete in com- are a group of modest but immensely im- an entirely new order. Matisse's freedom in
parison with the fully achieved and daring pressive sculptures, among them the first sculpture consists in his ability to start anew
pieces of the period from 1907. One notes Reclining Figure (1907), whose pose originally every time, and arrive at a plastic solution
among the early group the Bust of an Old comes out of a painting, the Serpentine both original and proper only to the part-
Woman, with its slurred and greasy surface (1907) and the Two Negresses (1907), whose icular piece on which he is working. In