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f I were to recommend just one show at a regional art museum right now, it would be the Matisse, Life in Color: Masterworks from the Baltimore Museum of Art exhibition at the Indianapolis Museum of Art through Jan. 12, 2014.
With more than 100 artworks — paintings, sculpture, prints and artist books — it amounts to a satisfying retrospective of one of the 20th century’s most important artists: France’s Henri Matisse.
Matisse, who lived from 1869-1954, liberated the color in figural painting from being subservient to conventional notions of representation, perspective and rigid geometric order. In doing so, he made us aware that portraying people (and objects) wasn’t a cold academic exercise in representational realism — it was a way to give life to the emotions of the artist, the subject and the viewer. To that end, it could be as abstract or sketch-like as necessary.
Other artists were doing that, too, either just before or while Matisse blossomed into a Fauvist (a term loosely meaning “wild beast” to denote a group of French painters devoted to color) — Cézanne and Picasso come to mind. But Matisse seemed to want to free painting from even being two-dimensional.
By having vivid patterning share close quarters with bold solid colors, as well as by depicting mirrors and window frames as mere conduits for extending the designs in his interior spaces, he offered paintings that don’t seem to stop at their frames. They just flow right out of them and chase after the world in all its beguiling shapes and sights.
In Indianapolis, you see these thrilling effects in a work like the 1928 piece, “Seated Odalisque, Left Knee Bent, Ornamental Background and Checkerboard” (the title doesn’t mention the patterned red rug on the floor), as well as “Woman in Striped Pullover, Violin on Table” from late 1921/early 1922, which makes you feel woozy from the way the horizontal stripes of the sweater leap boldly forward from the vertical rows of blue and green circles on the wallpaper. (Matisse’s “odalisque,” a favorite subject, was a woman either nude or dressed in exotic Middle Eastern/North African clothing in atmospherically decorative interiors. He referred to them as a fantasy — “a happy nostalgia, a lovely vivid dream…”).
Judging from the crowds when I went on a Saturday afternoon, there’s huge demand in the Midwest for this major touring show and Indianapolis deserves our thanks for getting it. The works next go to Minneapolis and San Antonio, Texas. While I was there, docents constantly led groups through and the museum was one busy, happening and stimulating place.
Especially remarkable about the Indianapolis show is that you gain knowledge about the breadth and depth of Matisse’s full career even though it isn’t a formal retrospective. Rather all the works, save an exception or two, come from the Baltimore Museum of Art.
That is the home of the Cone Collection, which is one of the most important private collections ever given to an American art museum. Claribel and Etta Cone, two sisters who lived in Baltimore apartments and had money from their family’s textile business, acquired some 3,000 artworks in the first half of the last century — especially modern art by living artists who became acquaintances.
They particularly became patrons and supporters of Matisse, eventually acquiring 500 objects by him. (The Cones were introduced to European Modernists by their Paris friends Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo.) Claribel, a physician, died first, in 1929; Etta lived and collected art for another 20 years. Baltimore opened its Cone Wing in 1957, making it one of America’s great art museums. (In the time between Etta’s death and the wing’s opening, the collection was exhibited in various cities, including Cincinnati, according to The Cone Sisters of Baltimore: Collecting at Full Tilt.)
Theirs is a great story of art patronage. But, interesting as the Cone sisters are (and the show has much information about them), this exhibit is about Matisse. And it reaches its pinnacle with the display of 1935’s “Large Reclining Nude.” The nude’s strongly outlined, simplified, almost minimalist form is radically unconventional with a jutting shoulder and rounded thigh dwarfing her small head and breasts.
Since the painting draws so much of its power from color and patterning — her pink flesh floats on a blue background that has intersecting white lines — it appears her body’s shape was a mere afterthought. There is also a mysteriously compelling yellow thing (it looks like a heart) behind her.
But Matisse actually worked on this canvas for six months and photographs of his process are on display here. He started off with the figure being realistic, and that yellow mass being flowers, and then worked his paint until he arrived at the finished piece. The simplification and abstraction were a careful choice, a decision to imbue “Large Reclining Nude” with motion and life.
The show ends with a gallery largely devoted to Matisse’s late-career reinvention, turning to paper cutouts after illness made it hard for him to stand and paint. (He called this “drawing with scissors.”)
In 1947, this approach yielded his memorable “Jazz” series — 20 maquettes that craftsmen then turned into color stencils for a limited-series (250 copies) book, featuring brilliant shapes and colors that abstractly referenced much of what moved him in life. (He also supplied text.) The show has individual unbound prints — loaned by Indiana University Art Museum — on the wall and in a case is a still-bound copy of the book from the Cone Collection.
In this exhibit, there is an enlarged photo of Matisse, at age 80 in 1950, holding a long stick with charcoal attached as he reaches to create a simplified, elongated face. It shows he was willing to suffer for his art. But there’s no suffering in viewing his art, only pleasure.
MATISSE, LIFE IN COLOR continues through Jan. 12, 2014 at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Purchase tickets ($18; $10 student/youth) in advance and find more information at imamuseum.org.
This article appears in Nov 13-19, 2013.