Joy & Color: Revisit Works of Henri Matisse in New York’s MoMA
Henri Matisse’s “Dance (I),” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City — which has reopened, and posted signs to encourage social distancing. Photo by Jillian Cheney.
The Museum of Modern Art was one of the first New York museums to reopen to in-person visitors on Aug. 27. Other art museums have followed: The Metropolitan Museum of Art reopened on Aug. 29, and the Brooklyn Museum reopened on Sept. 12.
Each museum has a reopening policy to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. Masks are required and hand sanitizer dispensers are available at several places for visitor use. At the MoMA, visitors are required to purchase a timed ticket in advance on any day but Monday (which is reserved for members).
Modern art in particular is notable and engaging because of the ways it provides a commentary of the changing world over the past century, in regards to industrialism, racism, gender inequality, consumerism, war and a host of other social issues. Modern art is notable and engaging also because it’s capable of abstracting us away from those social issues which are readily found in the world around us: it offers the opportunity to escape, and to find joy and community where we otherwise wouldn’t.
In art, one of the most simple ways to invoke delight is the use of bright color — a technique perfected by Henri Matisse. Matisse, born in December 1869 in France, was a stranger to no medium, known for painting, sculpting, printmaking, sketching and a brief time in architecture.
Matisse was raised Catholic, but abandoned the faith early on in his life and was not practicing for most of adulthood. But he sought a spiritual peace elsewhere. In “Notes of a Painter,” his 1908 essay, Matisse says his goal was “an art of balance, or purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter.”
Fauvism — named because a critic labeled these artists fauves, or “wild beasts” — was founded and led by Matisse. A much more avant-garde style, Fauvism focuses on the use of vivid colors.
Works of well-known Impressionists before this period were marked with an absence of harsh lines, often to create paintings that radiate a soft, comforting glow of light and form.
By contrast, the absence of harsh lines in the work of Fauves creates a more garish image. Take, for example, Matisse’s “The Red Studio,” on display in the MoMA.
“The Red Studio,” 1911. Creative Commons photo.
More an idealized version of Matisse’s studio than a realistic representation, the room contains several small-scale paintings similar to his own work, frames, art equipment and other furniture.
If it wasn’t enough that the walls, floor and furniture is all one shade of crimson, note that the viewer is looking into a corner of the room — and that there are no lines on the wall indicating as much.
The feeling it gives is one of stumbling displacement in a fantasy.
“The Blue Window” — another Matisse housed at the MoMA from 1913 — presents a similar concept. The viewer sees both the inside of a room and the landscape outside, both overwhelmingly blue.
“The Blue Window,” 1913. Photo courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art.
The only distinction is between indigo and azure, the light outline of the window and the home in the distance. On its own, the blue creates a more calming atmosphere than the primal red of the studio. But the image is imbued with an ominous uncertainty.
The eventual change of public taste from the gentle art of Monet to the saturated color blocking of Matisse would ultimately take a few decades, aided by the support of Paris’ elite.
A new exhibit at the MoMA, entitled “Félix Fénéon: The Anarchist and the Avant-Garde — From Signac to Matisse and Beyond” is devoted to the collection of the anarchist critic and publisher who had an early professional interest in Matisse.
In late nineteenth and early twentieth century Paris, Fénéon was accused of participating in a bombing, wrote in notable literary magazines and worked in the arts. His preference in everything was for the avant-garde.
In 1906, Fénéon became the dealer at the Bernheim-Jeune, one of the oldest art galleries in Paris. He signed Matisse on a gallery contract in 1909, which offered Matisse the first stable income of his career.
Several of Matisse’s works make up this exhibit, as a small sampling of the works Fénéon received. His early works are more similar to the likes of van Gogh and Cézanne, with swirling brushstrokes and an abundance of movement.
Even still, his work was defined by radiant colors. In comparison, even a Modigliani looks drab.
Matisse continued painting well into the twentieth century, but a diagnosis of intestinal cancer and a botched surgery in 1941 left him in excruciating pain and unable to stand for long hours to paint until his death in 1954.
Though it may have offered some physical comfort to abandon his work, Matisse found ways to continue.
The Catholic Herald says that this came after a spiritual transformation, what Matisse called a “rebirth.” He approached his art thereafter “with the greatest humility … like a communicant approaching the Lord’s Table.”
It began the period in which Matisse exclusively created cut-outs: shapes and forms of paper, made often with large shears. He was assisted both in this and in healthcare by young Russian Lydia Delectorskaya.
These cut-outs took many forms: abstract ferns, leaves and other unidentifiable, malleable shapes. Most recognizable are the “Blue Nudes,” a series of cut-outs depicting women as Matisse drew them.
“The Blue Nudes.” Photo courtesy of henrimatisse.org.
In many places, Matisse even dedicated entire swatches of wall to stained glass lookalikes, a solid blue background overlaid with arches filled by floral patterns. Much like the way Matisse decorated “The Red Studio” with his own works and trinkets, these cut-outs became the works that decorated the walls of his home.
There’s something about these cut-outs that conveys an almost innocent joy.
Matisse’s expertise is not lost — in fact, the new medium only offers a new way to express a mastery of colors and light — but it is eclipsed by the delightful creativity these works express.
One of the largest cut-outs is “The Swimming Pool,” displayed in its own room in the MoMA. Matisse created the scene after visiting a swimming pool in the heat of summer. Unbearably hot, he returned home immediately and decided he would make his own.
“The Swimming Pool.” Photo courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art.
So he did, with life-size (and in some cases, larger than life) abstract, blue figures of humans, sea creatures and water contrasted by a white background. In the absence of a real swimming pool, the piece is delightfully immersive.
There seems to be a lesson here, too, something akin to “when life hands you lemons” — as Matisse was physically deteriorating, unable to enjoy life’s pleasures, and still found a way to create his own brand of joy in the midst of it.
In today’s pandemic, would that be similar to finding a new Netflix show? Or learning how to make bread?
Matisse’s return to faith was aided by a young Dominican nun, Sister Jacques-Marie, who had once been his nurse. He created The Chapelle du Rosaire in France near the convent she worshipped in.
One stained glass window in Matisse’s chapel. Creative Commons photo.
The chapel is unique because it encompassed the vision and direction of only one artist: though Matisse was no architect, he designed the building’s structure as well as its every stained glass window and ornament.
At the unveiling of the chapel in 1951, Matisse said "This work… is the result of all my active life. Despite all its imperfections I consider it as my masterpiece."
It should come as no surprise that blue is the dominant color in the chapel. Royal blue adorns half of the building’s clay roof tiles in a wave-like “V” pattern. Bright blue serves as the background for green leaves and yellow fern-shaped designs on a double-paneled stained glass window; it joins these same colors as what appears to be unfurled leaves in another stained glass display. (It should come as no surprise either that the patterns of these stained glass windows are similar to patterns of many of the cut-outs in his home.)
The imagery is not explicitly religious — the only thing that is in the chapel is 14 Matisse-style Stations of the Cross figure drawings — but the space is one that feels undeniably spiritual.
Matisse even wrote of his stained glass windows that "The spiritual expression of their colour strikes me as unquestionable." But the most spiritual of Matisse’s works may not even be this house of worship.
Instead — now more than ever, in the age of distance and isolation and re-emerging indoor dining and the omnipresence of Zoom — there seems to be found a genuine faith in his “Dance (I).”
The version of this painting on display at the MoMA is only a study. The completed version was a commission by Russian businessman and art collector Sergei Shchukin.
“The Dance,” 1910, commissioned version. Creative Commons photo.
This commission is much cleaner: the lines around the dancers are harsher, their stomachs, heads and muscles more visibly defined. It makes the dance appear almost cultish.
More than being an incomplete sketch of a more desirable finished product, “Dance (I)” is an intentional, alternate portrayal of these dancers. There are far fewer outlines and the dancers have much less grace.
The image is one of pure, carefree joy.
It’s often noted that the gap between two of the dancers’ hands functions like an invitation for the viewer to join the circle, something that right now seems more than taboo.
But whether or not you join, the dancers are enjoying themselves plenty. Where the other set of dancers look ritualistic, these appear to be more delighted worshippers.
Even to see this painting, to sit in front of it for a while, is to revisit the now somewhat unfamiliar joy of worship, celebration or dance in community (or being naked on a hilltop with your friends, if that’s what suits you).
And aren’t we all looking for a little joy?
The Museum of Modern Art is now open to visitors. Tickets can be reserved here.
Félix Fénéon, The Anarchist and the Avant-Garde—From Signac to Matisse and Beyond is on display until Jan. 2, 2021.
Jillian Cheney is a Poynter-Koch fellow for Religion Unplugged who loves consuming good culture and writing about it. She also reports on American Protestantism and Evangelical Christianity. You can find her on Twitter @_jilliancheney.