"Channelling Matisse"

Yes, of course I like Matisse. He's up there somewhere on my list of favourite artists, for both his exquisite drawings and his many enchanting paintings. Just lately, I've realized that it's natural for me to connect with Matisse -- for his colour, his patterns and, despite his sober appearance, his exuberance.

There's one painting of his, though, that I've always intensely disliked -- "Decorative Figure on an Oriental Background". On my innocent assumption that snapping a photo of my own book is not violating copyright, I offer this mini-glimpse:--

From the first time I saw it, and it is often reproduced, I've winced at the incredibly ugly fabric background and the figure's bolt-upright vertical back. Well, surprise, surprise. Over the past year, I've been reading a 2-volume work on Matisse by Hilary Spurling, and along the way, I learned many interesting things relevant to this painting. First, this fabric pattern is so well known in classic French decorative arts that it has a name --Tissu-something-something (…sorry I didn't make note of it), and Matisse adored it. Second, his hometown of Bohain in northern France has been famous for centuries for its weavers, so much so that Napoleon chose them to work for the Empress Josephine. Although Matisse's father was a matter-of-fact grain merchant, the family was inevitably immersed in their hometown's aura of fabric, colour, design.

Third fact: The "decorative figure" is just that -- a large statue Matisse created, not a human figure. And with its straight back, he was asserting his legendary fascination with the vertical. In his young days, fellow artists nicknamed him "Monsieur Plumb Line" for his devotion to checking his verticals with a plumb line -- and then, in a very conscious way, playing the horizontals and the "arabesques" against them.

If you've been watching this spot since the last post, you'll have guessed that my funny little sculpture with the flat horizontal bottom is about to reappear. I don't remember how the impulse struck me, but I decided I'd do a riff on my un-favourite Matisse, using my own "decorative figure".

First, I needed to construct another prop, a small wannabe mirror that was *total fun* to make though far less elaborate than Matisse's.

Then I dug in my packrat's stash for some vaguely similar fabrics and potted up a small cactus for a set-up like this:

Originally, I thought I'd do a horizontal layout vs. Matisse's vertical, but at an early stage, I realized I'd do better sticking with his original vertical orientation.

Although I made a horizontal variation on his background fabric, I decided to "copy" the other colours and patterns in the original. I tried to pay attention to the contrasts in tonal value, the extent to which the various patterns are "exact" or "inexact," and the use of line. You'll notice that my figure's flat horizontal bottom was lost almost immediately in the fascination of the cloth flowing around it.

I didn't even try to deal with the weird stuff that's going on in the background. For example, the way the fabric comes forward on the right side suggests that the figure is sitting near the corner of a wall -- but no corner is evident. And the brown flowing mass behind the figure's head and right arm -- is that hair?? Don't know.

Well, no matter. I did what I could, and it was rather thrilling to tackle the whole thing. About midway along, I'd come to realize that I would be covering almost every square inch with pattern.

Almost every working session, I'd find myself asking, " Oh my god, where is this going?" You can follow the steps as I worked away, wondering, "Is this going to anchor somehow? Will the centre hold?" I think, in the end, it did:--

And my funny little mirror? It did take on a life of its own, didn't it? Coincidentally, after finishing this painting, I found in a different book a small black and white reproduction of Matisse's painting "The Artist and his Model" with this same mirror:

Later I found a colour version reproduced. Wow!! Can this guy use colour or what?!?!

After all this, you might wonder if I've changed my opinion about the original "Decorative Figure on an Ornamental Background." Answer: Sort of. Looking at it so carefully over a couple of months, I've certainly become used to it and have to admit it's something of a wonder -- the way it all locks together.

In retrospect, I can see it would have been very fascinating and challenging to stick with the idea of a horizontal version -- mirror and all -- and to choose different colours related to each other in the same way that the colours in the original relate to each other. (This might have taken a couple of years rather than months.)

Matisse was such a perfectionist that he often reclaimed paintings that had been sold in order to make adjustments. And he certainly wouldn't have shied away from trashing Version One and re-doing it if he saw a better way. For Kelly Mo-tisse, though, when it's done, it's done. Ouch! "Don't say 'done', say 'finished,'" my mother would have said.

Eh bien. C'est fini.