Of special interest is the multitude of snapshots taken by the Armenian photographer Matossian of the portrait of Lydia Delectorskaya, the model who posed for The Large Blue Dress (1937). A Russian émigré and studio assistant, Delectorskaya made the dress herself, a royal blue silk gown with mutton sleeves and white ruffles (that shade of blue was Matisse’s favorite color; the painted rendition, however, is actually quite muted and verges on gray). The dress is on display at the museum, and the black-and-white photos alongside it trace the painting’s evolution.
Right: Henri Matisse, The Large Blue Dress, 1937, Oil on canvas. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. John Wintersteen, 1956. © 2012 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Right: Matossian, Photograph documenting Henri Matisse's process of painting The Large Blue Dress, 1937 . Philadelphia Museum of Art, Henry McIlhenny Papers. © 2012 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
Unlike his method in the 1900s and 1910s in which he painted a composition, put it aside, and then started work on a new canvas — using the same composition but employing different stylistic effects — now Matisse used the photographs to preserve a particular “state” of his paintings. No need for a new canvas. He would consult the photos and continue his revision, reworking the original painting.
The Met’s exhibit reaches a climax of sorts when we reach the penultimate room, a re-creation of three walls of an exhibit at Galerie Maeght in Paris in 1945. As was the case there, photographs documenting the evolution of a painting surround the final product. The works featured: La France (1939), The Dream (1940), and Still Life with Magnolia (1941). The point of the original exhibition, and of the current re-creation at The Met, was to champion the process of creating art and to drive home the point that Matisse did not work spontaneously, unlike his Impressionist forebears. In his words, the idea was to display “the progressive development of the artworks through their various respective states toward definitive conclusions and precise signs.”
Another takeaway from this glorious exhibit: Matisse liked happy subjects and happy colors. His paintings are suffused with light and with bright, bold colors and exotic patterns derived from Islamic art (a favorite of his after visiting Morocco in 1912). He thought art should make you feel good, saying that he “dreamt of an art of balance and purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter … a mental soother … like a good armchair.”
The works here are soothing indeed, but you won’t need an armchair. You won’t want to pause as you take in this show.
©2013 Val Castronovo for SeniorWomen.com
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