Drawing notebooks – Newspaper Kommersant No. 42 (7487) dated 03/14/2023

An exposition dedicated to the pre-war work of Henri Matisse (1869–1954) has opened at the Orangerie Museum in Paris. Items collected here from museums in France and America tell how the artist reinvented himself in the 1930s and 1940s. The correspondent of Kommersant in France was pleased with the quality and human size of the exhibition Alexey Tarkhanov.

The title of the exhibition is Matisse. Cahiers d’art, le tournant des annees 1930″ is easy to translate, but difficult to understand without explanation. “Matisse” – clearly, Matisse. The “turn of the 1930s” is how and why he changed his style and his view of painting during these years. But about Cahiers d’art it is worth telling in more detail.

Notebooks on Art is a magazine published by the publishing house of the same name, founded by Christian (Christ) Zervos, a French Greek who turned art criticism into a textbook. In addition to brilliant essays, the magazine was famous for its detailed and even meticulous study of technology, style, time, biography, considering not the result, but the process. It was a scientific and technical magazine about artists and for artists. He did not so much glorify them as he thought about them, allowing them to reflect on what they and their fellows in the profession were doing. Perhaps, thanks to such an interlocutor, Henri Matisse, to whom as many as 15 issues out of the 97 issues published during the existence of the magazine, rushed for a new life and new inspiration.

The exhibition opens with Lady with a Veil (1927), in which a woman looks at the artist in near despair. A rare guest was sent to Paris by the New York MoMA. The curators notice on this, according to Louis Aragon, “as tragic as the Mona Lisa”, traces of grave doubts on the canvas. The artist was bored with sea views, balconies, odalisques, lush still lifes – all the colorful charm of the south, which we appreciated so much from him, having been brought up from childhood on earlier things from Moscow collections.

To be honest, it is difficult to see evidence of a crisis in this magnificent work, but since the 1930s the artist’s life path has changed. Henri Matisse embarks on a long journey. First, he sails to Oceania and even attends the filming of the film Taboo by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (1884-1951). In Orangerie there is an opportunity to see excellent shots taken by a German and imagine what impression the atolls with coconut palms could have made on the artist. Of course, Matisse did not become Gauguin, limiting himself to photographs and drawings, many of which (“Tahitian Women”, “Landscape of Tahiti”, “Drum”) look like sketches of paintings that never happened. Only one painting appears here, but it contains so little specificity that it seems that it could have been written on a postcard.

Oceania was followed by Martinique, Guadeloupe and, twice, the United States – this was the shortest path to the American rich, who after the revolution and the war replaced the Russians in the lists of the main buyers. Matisse travels around America, sees Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Baltimore and New York, but the changing landscapes will not be directly reflected in his things. Changes are taking place, but they are not literal and are best seen in stories he has known for a long time. Commissioned by friend and collector Albert Barnes, the monumental “Dance” is incomparable with another written more than twenty years ago for Sergei Shchukin. This is not the joy of a rural dance in a circle, but the bacchanalia of the new age, in which the dancers will be reminded of military marches.

In the penultimate hall, two perfectly getting along, but completely different geniuses of the 20th century come together. Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, who highly valued each other (“North Pole against South,” said Matisse), both compete and help each other, especially in illustrations commissioned by generous publishers for copyrighted books, including Ulysses.

On the occasion of the exhibition at the Orangerie, The Song (1938), a mantelpiece ordered by Nelson Rockefeller for his New York apartment, arrived from Houston, which had never visited Europe. From Philadelphia came The Lady in Blue (1937). And the famous “Large Reclining Nude” (aka “Pink Nude”) of 1935 was sent by the Baltimore Museum, where from the autumn of last year until January the first version of this exhibition about the 30s of Matisse was held.

“Big Nude” is a complete break with soft colored nude odalisques. The colors become simplified, the composition is deliberately random, the edges of the canvas cut the knee, elbow, brush. A different look at a woman also means the appearance of other women in the artist’s life. New friends, models, assistants. And they are Russian. First of all, this is Lydia Delektorskaya (1910–1998), the muse of Matisse, who, like many Russian muses, washed, washed, cleaned and cared for her lawful wife, and eventually became one of the keepers of the artist’s memory. It is to her, in particular, that the Pushkin Museum owes rich Matisse gifts. Delectorskaya not only posed for the “Reclining Nude”, but also directly participated in its creation. And besides Lydia Delektorskaya, Elena Golitsyna (1912–1966), who became the model for another famous work, also appears at the exhibition. It was written after the occupation of France. “Romanian Blouse” (1940) closes the exhibition, made with the active participation of the current publishing house Cahiers d’Art, and reminds you how easy it is to start life again after sixty, as long as there is no war.