Sedef's Corner: Are you in the mood for some Matisse?

Henri Matisse, Dance, 1909
(MOMA)

I have been doing a bit of spring cleaning and found this post about a Matisse exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York July 18th -October 11, 2010 - Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917. I went to the show a number of times and enjoyed revisiting it here once again so much that I wanted to post it and share it with my readers. It was a powerful exhibit that I still don't feel qualified enough to interpret but would like to share here for your enjoyment and edification...

BACK SERIES

October 11 2010

The information I could garner from the museum visit was only visually oriented and did not address my main concerns but as I was preparing this post I found MOMA's Brown Paper Bag Lunch Lecture on this very exhibit. Although I still have a hard time comprehending most modernist art, being able to savor the wonderful paintings that Matisse himself considered so significant in his career was a precious experience. The most fascinating part of the exhibit was the light it shone on the process each painting went through and the amount of work it entailed before it was actually considered 'finished'.

What most people don't realize is the significance of hard work that goes into producing art, even more than the talent. This exhibit actually concentrated on the details of the manufacturing and the different stages of each painting and sculpture from this period. Seeing the X-ray images of the sketches and the paintings underneath the final product was akin to visiting Matisse's studio as the works progressed. Observing each work closely left me with awe of how his mind worked and still wondering how he thought to do what he did.

I finally came to the conclusion that these works were not ideas that were thought up and just put on canvas but were evolved entities that came into being as the artist dug them out of his subconscious. These were built up and changed over time and maybe didn't need to have specific discernible explanations. They should be experienced and appreciated without asking the typical questions of what or why. I hope you will enjoy them as I did...

This is the link to the lecture for the Matisse exhibit from 2010 given by Lauren Mahony, curatorial assistant in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at MOMA.

I have tried to be faithful to the size of the paintings and put them in the order Ms Mahony is talking about. Enjoy...