General Overview/ Philosophy

[1869 - 1954]

            It’s a difficult prospect to imagine an artistic figure more polarizing in his time than Henri Matisse.  Indeed, for every favorable appraisal this painter received, there was a blast of staunch criticism lurking in its wake.  The French public for whom he produced took every opportunity to debate and discuss, with wildly varying opinion, even his most humble offerings.  Some accused him of bearing too much emotion onto the shoulders of his paintings, while just as many saw his works devoid of feeling and purpose.  Too theoretical, yet too undisciplined, too intellectual yet too instinctive, too methodical yet too sloppy.  About the only thing the art community of the early twentieth century could agree on with complete certainty was that this man; this Matisse, was an artist worth discussing.

            Perhaps it was the juxtaposition of contrasted character that existed between the art and the man, or maybe his wide berth of style variation which denied easy categorization fed the most fuel to the fire.  Regardless of reason, Matisse irked a significant portion of the international art community.  While his many styles and evasive techniques marked him as another crazy artiste, his consummate desire was to be perceived as a typical bourgeoisie gentleman. As Jack Flam writes in his Matisse retrospective, “‘Do tell the American people I am a normal man,’ he urged Clara MacChesney in 1912; ‘that I am a devoted husband and father, that I have three fine children, that I go to the theater, ride horseback, have a comfortable home, a fine garden that I love, flowers, etc., just like a normal man’ ” Many expounded on this behavior as grounds to claim hypocrisy in his methodology and artistic statements.  Matisse was a man of both strict discipline and whimsical artistic potential.  You’ll find that this skeeved an incredible amount of people.

            The key to Matisse’s success lies squarely in his seemingly contradictory nature.  Matisse subscribed to the notion that there was more than one way to perceived reality, and that different realities were more suited to different kinds of medium and style.  It was always Matisse’s sincerest insistence that he painted what he saw, regardless of the philosophy or school of thought the painting subscribed to.  It is this fluid and wide-spanning view of the possibilities of art that had – and has – kept the work of Matisse from becoming stale and forgotten.

              Written by: Matt Schafer

              Footnote Citation:

              Jack Flam, Matisse: A Retrospective,
             (New York: Hugh Lauter Levin Associates, Inc., 1988), 21-26.