Page 38 - Studio International - September 1970

perpetually resist the identification of any was committed only to the solution proper to up and trimmed down over long periods of
element of the whole except in terms of its the sculpture on which he was working. This work. The poses are often animated and un-
belonging, its organic necessity in the develop- detachment from style and the lore of balanced, and interact strongly with the sur-
ment of his sculpture. materials gives Matisse's works a presence rounding space. When one considers the
The second aspect of the Jeannette group which quite unlike that of Rodin and Brancusi who polarity between these two modes in Matisse's
deserves notice is the conception of the work were both committed to the actuality of the sculpture one becomes aware of the technical
in series. The sequence of heads is not carried object and the processes by which it came into and aesthetic limits imposed by his major
out over a period of years as with The Back existence. Volume for them is matter, hard or commitment to painting. That is to say, the
Reliefs, or with Brancusi's progressive refine- soft, a particular substance, whose natural larger, more composed pieces have a character
ment of his various motifs. The Jeannette character and resistance are contained in the and presence equivalent to that of easel paint-
series was made in the space of two years and conception and development of the work. ings. Their relatively small size, their lack of
worked on continuously during that period. Both, as sculptors trying to uncover what was aggression, their quality of contained and
The sculptures have a separate and individual central to a sculpture tradition, were primarily internal life, their balance and order, removes
character and presence, but they are part of committed to realizing their feelings in terms them from the real world, gives them a slightly
a larger total, and gain from being seen to- of material and process. To Matisse, in con- remote, 'framed' character; one attends to
gether, as stages in a development. Matisse trast, a painter in search of a 'complete them as one would to a view, or a painting.
had painted separate 'states', progressive ver- possession of his mind', the organization of One feels that Matisse had neither the desire
sions of the same picture, before, but never volume was simply the proper concern of nor the technical capacity to make something
was the conception so ambitiously realized as sculpture as that of colour was for painting. more ambitious, more direct, out of the overt
in this series of sculptures. The experience of volume was thus essentially intensity and animation and unbalance of the
The effect of this series is to mitigate the abstract: it initially derived from his eye and smaller, more 'tactile' sculptures.
importance of the motif as such. The subject mind, not from the handling of material. The It is significant of Matisse's fundamental com-
is not the woman's head, but the process of unequalled sensuousness of Matisse's use of mitment as a painter that the one project
making the woman's head. The head is the clay should not deceive one into thinking that which engaged him that could be regarded as
vehicle of perceptual continuity, of recogni- his response took place under conditions that an attempt to make an ambitious monu-
tion, no more. Elsewhere Matisse depicts the were anything but contrived and deliberate. mental sculpture— The Back series—is in the
artist from behind in the act of painting the form of relief. That is to say they are one-sided
model, a more elaborate reflection of the IV like a painting, and though there is plainly
same theme; the ambition of the Jeannette The sculptures of Matisse that seem to me the more than one view from the front, the point
series is an indication of Matisse's confidence most achieved and satisfying of his oeuvre, the of the relief form is that it works by illusion:
both in his own power, and in the ability of two reclining figures made in the late 20s, that is, that the real and tangible form on the
modern sculpture to sustain so sophisticated raise certain questions about the nature of his surface of the relief simultaneously stands for
a conception. ambition in sculpture. The pose of the figure a volume and displacement in depth that
A third question raised by the Jeannette series is forms an enclosed and contained unit; it can remain ambiguous. Matisse's use of the
that of 'finish'. Here also Matisse was carrying support itself without a base; the recumbent modelled relief form is almost unique among
out with greater concreteness solutions that posture allows for a maximum of invention modern art of the first rank; it is a splendid
he had found satisfying in painting. As the and distortion of shape without disturbing example of an acute awareness of his limita-
`states' are somehow more separate and real anatomical or structural consequences. Al- tions being turned spectacularly into a positive
when physically made, cast in bronze, than though the figure is at rest there is a tremen- strength. Matisse was not interested in those
when depicted, so also is it more demonstrable dous rotational movement inside the body; technical and preliminary aspects of monu-
in the nature of sculpture that a piece is both shoulders and both knees are parallel to mental sculpture that not only consume time
finished, not when it has achieved some the horizontal but there is a twist of 180° and effort, but in fact tend to narrow and
imposed or stereotyped unity of style or sur- between them; pursuing the analogy in the make rigid the sculptor's conception; he
face, but simply when work on it has stopped, second version, the forms of thighs and lower wanted the development of the object to be
the artist has gone as far as he wants, and it is abdomen are almost transformed into two accessible to his control and possibly radical
cast into bronze. The fact that Matisse in the twisted strands of rope. modification at all times. Rodin's flexibility
Jeannette series and elsewhere used the plaster If one isolates the distinctive characteristics of was hard won, at the expense of years of craft
cast of an earlier state as an armature on these pieces— their contained overall shape, experience, of banal dealing with matter and
which to continue modelling, indicates the their lack of interaction with, penetration of, process. Matisse had the sensibility but not the
simultaneous presence of the aesthetic com- the surrounding space, the location of move- equipment of a major sculptor, and his most
pleteness of a certain stage and its provisional ment within the figure, their relative small- ambitious effort in sculpture proper, this
nature in face of the development of the series. ness as objects, the pose being supported or at relief series, is enormously sculptural in feel-
Later Matisse was to make certain sculptures rest—one finds that they are typical of all the ing, but pictorial in effect; the tension between
— The Tiara, Henriette II, for example, in which large free-standing sculptures Matisse made the two modes giving the series its strange
he achieved a tautness and smoothness of after 1903.7 In general these figures carry the beauty and power. When one starts to con-
surface which approximate to a conventional aims he set himself in painting, of conveying sider how the figure would work in the various
idea of 'finish'. That this was only one possi- balance, harmony and order. However, there panels if it was fully realized in three dimen-
bility of many is indicated by the head of is a category of pieces which I have not yet sions, the unbalance of the first figure or the
Henriette being the second of a series in which touched on— those small heads and figures vast bulk of the last in the group, one appreci-
the third and last, and most interesting, is which were made in the hand, rather than on ates that Matisse's intensely felt working of
returned to the area of modelling; the material the modelling stand; the pressure of the hand volume on this scale is made possible by the
is reasserted as soft, not hard, but the regu- creates not the surface but the form of the vertical rectangle, its physical flatness, or at
larity and volumetric fullness of the second piece; in consequence they are not only least shallowness, and its one-sided nature. In
stage can be felt solid beneath the surface, intensely tactile but far less visually of a piece general there is a progression from the sharp
giving the head a mysterious and subtle than the larger sculptures. They give one the separation of the richly modelled figure from
authority. The finish of both Rodin and feeling of having been squeezed into existence the ground in the first relief to the virtual
Brancusi were accessible to Matisse, but he in a few moments rather than of being built identification of the figure with the ground