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Matisse in Morocco
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17622 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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6 / 1990 |
1,865 Words |
| Author
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Jane Addams Allen
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"Painting is a very difficult thing for me - there is always this struggle…. It's so sweet when it comes effortlessly." It was a dark day in Tangiers on March 16, 1912, when Henri Matisse scrawled these lines on a postcard to Gertrude Stein.
What irony! There was Matisse, at forty-two the master of the arabesque, in Morocco, the home of the arabesque multiplied and intertwined in a gorgeous array of Islamic patterns and colors. But instead of reveling in the sights and colors of the Casbah, he was imprisoned by an interminable rain. All he could paint for weeks were still-lifes set up in his hotel room.
When the good weather came, his spirits soared. Matisse in Morocco: The Paintings and Drawings, 1912-1913 at the National Gallery in Washington evokes a blissful mood where beauty is in the very atmosphere, enveloping the most ordinary things in its transforming aura. Including twenty-five drawings, this evocative exhibition, a USA-USSR joint project, documents Matisse's two sojourns in Morocco - from late January to mid-April 1912, and from early October 1912 until mid-February 1913. These sojourns mark an important transition in his career.
Matisse had been attracted to Islamic art for years before these two trips. Beginning in 1906, the colorful tiles and textiles of Islam had been the building blocks of his new concept of decorative painting. As Gauguin had urged, he studied rugs to discover the secrets of abstract color. Making the space of his compositions ever flatter, Matisse borrowed Islamic textile partners to transform domestic salon scenes into grand designs - for example, his 1911 Family of the Painter, now at the State Hermitage Museum in Leningrad. His huge panels La Dance (1909-10) and La Musique (1910) were like decorative tapestries. They depicted a mythic golden age when art and life were one.
But Matisse was a very complex artist. As was revealed in two previous Matisse shows at the National Gallery - the first devoted to his paper cut-outs and the second to his early years in Nice from 1916-1930 - he was never satisfied with what he had achieved. After each advance, he began worrying about what aspects of painting he had left behind.
What Matisse wanted from Morocco is not easily analyzed. Like most northern European travelers to Africa, he craved sun and light. But more than that, he was missing that opium of artists - a direct optical stimulus from nature. And he wanted it without giving up what he had already achieved - a new decorative art of expressive color. In effect, he was looking for an earthly paradise to paint. It was natural enough for him to direct this quest toward North Africa, where the rich patterns of Islamic art were the ordinary stuff of life.
Even when the sun failed him during the first month of his stay, Matisse stuck to his program of painting from life. But he wasn’t happy, and it shows in his work. Vase of Irises and Basket of Oranges, the two still-lifes he painted in his hotel room while it poured outside, reflect his claustrophobia. The dark walls press in on the flowers and fruit. Even the reflection in the mirror behind the irises denies the viewer entrance into space.
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