The Pagan Sphinx

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Artist of the Week and ABC Wednesday, Letter M - Matisse

Henri Matisse

(1869 – 1954)

Self-Portrait

1900

Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of color and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter. Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Picasso, as one of the two seminal artists of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture. Although he was initially labelled a Fauve (wild beast), by the 1920s he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. His mastery of the expressive language of colour and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art.

Woman Reading

1894

He first started to paint in 1889, when his mother had brought him art supplies during a period of convalescence following an attack of appendicitis. He discovered "a kind of paradise" as he later described it,^[ and decided to become an artist, deeply disappointing his father.

The Maid

1896

Nude with a White Wash Towel

1902-03

"What interests me most is neither still life nor landscape: it is the human figure."

Blue Nude

1905

Le bonheur de vivre (The Joy of Life)

1905-06

"Seek the strongest color effect possible... the content is of no importance."

Marguiritte

(the artist's daughter)

1906

Madame Matisse

(the artist's first wife)

1907

Dance I

1909

"When I put a green, it it not grass. When I put a blue, it is not the sky."

Dance II

1910

Seville Still-Life

1910-1911

"Expression, for me, does not reside in passions glowing in a human face or manifested by violent movement. The entire arrangement of my picture is expressive; the place occupied by the figures, the empty spaces around them, the proportions, everything has its share."

The Goldfish

1912

"I wouldn't mind turning into a vermilion goldfish."

The White Feather

1919

Odalesque with Red Pants

1921

Odalesque with Gray Pants

1927

"Creativity takes courage."

The Romanian Green Blouse

1939

"The portrait is one of the most curious art forms. It demands special qualities in the artist, and an almost total kinship with the model."

Still-Life with Shellfish

1940

"I have always tried to hide my efforts and wished my works to have the light joyousness of springtime, which never lets anyone suspect the labors it has cost me...."

1944

"There are always flowers for those who want to see them."

Anfitrite

(guouace on paper cut and pasted)

1947

"Cutting into color reminds me of the sculptor's direct carving."

La Gerbe

1953

Matisse Paper Cut-Outs

Blue Nude

1952

The Drawings

"Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence."

1932

1948

1950

1951

Sources

Matisse: Life and Painting

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ABC Wednesday

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Monday, October 11, 2010

Picture for One Moment

Gerhard Mantz adds with his completely computer generated works a very contemporary position to the subject of landscape. Reminding at natural landscape views at first glance, his images refer through elements of alienation such as surface structures or irregularities of software to their creation process beyond real situations. They resemble archetypal landscapes that existed or will exist in far temporal distance, leaving the viewer in ambivalence confronted with the absence of any other living being and with the perspective of a lonely and often even threatened human being on nature.