Matisse’s friends were dying in the trenches when he met a new model.
“Our interest’s on the dangerous edge of things,” wrote the poet Robert Browning. “The honest thief, the tender murderer, the superstitious atheist.” One reason — one of many — to be interested in Henri Matisse is that he was the severest, the most ruthlessly disciplined of sensualists.in the Phillips Collection, the 10-month German attack on Verdun had only recently ended, as had the battle of the Somme, with combined casualties of around 2 million.
But Laurette was playful. She seems to have felt safe with Matisse, and she knew how to use her sensuality to help him loosen up. She dressed up in costume, now as a Spanish senorita, now as a turban-wearing European in an Arab harem, or she wore nothing at all. “She had a theatrical gift for transformation,” writes Spurling, “switching from ethereal purity to luxuriant abandon. … She could sleep at will like a cat, retaining a regal dignity even when slumped, dozing.
Otherwise, the painting’s austerity is striking. Paris, in all its gray rigidity, is outside. The room itself, gray and brown, has a hardness, reinforced by Matisse’s intentionally visible, scratchy revisions and by the craquelure in the wall above Laurette’s body. But Matisse is Matisse — the greatest colorist of all time — and his sparing use of localized color lends the painting a sensuality that’s all the more poignant for being provisional, hard-won.What a strange, self-conscious painting! The two empty chairs, one of them holding an unfinished picture, bookend Laurette, as if her body were a library. A taut, brimming sense of the artist’s proximate presence holds the whole scene in like a meniscus.
Posing and painting, painting and posing … what a thing to be doing! What a sober, heartbreaking affirmation of life, and play, and sensuality, there in Paris, beside the turbid Seine, with the trenches — brimming with mud, death and excrement, not far to the east.Sebastian Smee is a Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic at The Washington Post and the author of “The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals and Breakthroughs in Modern Art.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Win 2 tickets to Matisse!Enter below to win 2 tickets to Matisse! Matisse - Bella Nostalgia World Tour Wed • Jun 19 • 7:00 PM House of Blues Dallas ,...
Read more »
Trail Blazers Wing Matisse Thybulle Surprise Cut From Australia's National TeamThe seven-year NBA vet will not be a part of Australia's national team in Paris later this month.
Read more »
'The Imaginary' Review - Netflix Does Its Best Studio Ghibli Impressionp style="line-height:1.38"Amanda and Rudger soar through the sky in ‘The Imaginary’/pbr /
Read more »
The Beats Studio Pro are down to $180, nearly matching their all-time lowThe Beats Studio Pro are nearly matching their all-time low. You can also get a 32-inch Amazon Fire TV under $100 and save $350 on the foldable Motorola Razr Plus.
Read more »
15 Best Manhwa Produced By Solo Leveling Studio10 Best Manhwa Produced By Solo Leveling Studio feature image with Sung Jin-woo from Solo Leveling in front of characters from Heavenly Demon Reborn! and The Archmage Returns After 4000 Years.
Read more »
Why Pixar Won't Develop Any Live-Action Remakes Explained By Studio ExecJoy and Sadness, a shaken Woody in Toy Story 4, and Remy being held in Ratatouille.
Read more »