An insight into Matisse's inspirations

Spot the milk jug from Collioure

Honestly: who could paint a red beach, with pink-infused sea, and be taken seriously?

Such was pretty much my reaction as a teenage A’ level art student when confronted with Matisse, the art-changing ‘wild beast’.

I was such a dreadfully conservative and conventional creature, even as a teen, that I simply could not ‘get’ any modern art. Apart, that was, from Picasso – but that was only really in terms of a sense that any artist who was as good as he was conventionally at 16 needed to evolve or die creatively.

The Other Half and I found our way to Collioure entirely by accident – or rather, it was because of rugby league and not because of art. The art followed.

And as we returned, year on year, utterly beguiled by the place, I had an epiphany: I ‘got’ Matisse.

It was the same experience – a northern European seeing and experiencing the light of the south.

Give or take another couple of years, and I returned from Collioure with fingers simply itching to take up art again myself.

After almost three decades, I started trying to create art once again.

Flowers and vase

There’s not a huge amount of Matisse’s art in British galleries. The Courtauld in London has a couple – including Red Beach from the year of Fauvism, 1905. In real life, the beach is Port d’Avall in Collioure, and we’ve spent a fair few very happy hours on it.

The Tate Modern’s cut outs exhibition in 2014 was a thrice-visited treat.

Last year’s Gardens from Monet to the Matisse at the RA was, in terms of Matissian content (given his presence in the title) disappointing.

October 2016’s exhibition of Matisse drawings at Eames Fine Art Gallery was a gem.

So when a new exhibition promises lots of Matisee – and an insight into just how his artistic mind worked, then it is an opportunity to be leapt at.

Mattise in the Studio opened at the Royal Academy in London earlier this month.

It’s a compact exhibition by the standard of some of the city’s recent wearying blockbusters – and this is no bad thing.

Grand Mask

The central idea is simple. Matisse collected all sorts of items during his life, which he used in his works, from strips of fabric to African masks to Chinese calligraphy to pots and vases.

Here we see some of these items displayed alongside works that they helped inspire or which directly feature them.

Thus the first room begins with Vase of Flowers from 1924

Next to it is the sea green Andalusian glass vase that is central to the composition. And after that, Safrano Roses at the Window from a year later.

Not only do we get to link the object and the paintings, but these two works offer Matisse in a much more pastel mood than is often the case: in the former, the delicacy of a lace curtain is simply delightful, but for all its simplicity, the use of lines and textures in the composition is sophisticated.

In the next room we have the wonderful Yellow Odalisque from 1937 – and alongside it, the small, decorated table from North Africa and the large pewter jug that feature in the work.

Yellow Odalisque

In the work – another illustration of how Matisse could combine colours on a canvas that, you feel, really shouldn’t work together (and there are a number of artists in Collioure these days who try for the same sort of effect but cannot pull it off) – there seems to be a meeting of worlds.

The jug came from the same area of the country that the artist himself hailed from and its very greyness could be taken as symbolising the grey north meeting the vivid south.

It’s easy to forget, in Matisse’s ecstatic use of colour, that he also had a superb sense of line.

And in the third room, we have a series of brush and ink pieces from the 1950s that that illustrate this perfectly – and the influence of the African masks that Matisse had encountered and collected.

The simplicity of line is simply wonderful – it has such purity and elegance.

These are not simply copies of the masks: have served as an inspiration; a jumping-off point for the artist rather than a straightforward appropriation.

Take The Italian Woman from 1916 as an example. At once extremely conventionally and formally posed, yet she appears to be dissolving into a drab background. It could almost be that the conventionality, with her mask-like face, render her less substantial as an individual.

The Italian Woman

Later, we encounter fabrics and more objects from North Africa – and it was fascinating to come at last into the final room, with some of the cut outs.

These included exhibits that had been seen at Tate Modern back in 2014 – not least the designs for the priests chasuble for the Chapel at Vence. Here, against the background of the decorative influences, you see them in a new light and with a new understanding.

It is a room that also includes a panel of Chinese calligraphy, hung as it was in Matisse’s own home in Nice, alongside some of his own work.

If this exhibition doesn’t have quite the uplifting impact of the cut outs, it has a depth that will set visitors thinking, whether they themselves make art or not.

The idea to group objects of inspiration and the works produced together was itself inspired, but even if you don’t really ‘get’ that, then the chance to see some superb works by such a major figure is not to be missed.

And of course, Collioure is here too – it is believed that the milk jug featured on the painting in the poster (and in other works) was from the village.

The objects themselves have plenty of interest – but it is in their role as ‘actors’ in these artworks makes them so much more.

I’ll be back before it closes.

• Matisse in the Studio is at the Royal Academy until 12 November.

Find out more at the Royal Academy.

America After the Fall is a bona fide must-see

American Gothic, Grant Wood

A couple of weeks ago, booking for the following evening to see America After the Fall at the Royal Academy, I observed to The Other Half that it would be worth the entry fee just to see Grant Wood’s iconic American Gothic.

As we discovered 24 hours later,  that was an entirely fair statement. But the rest of this concise exhibition means that its £12 ticket is an even better – if unexpected – bargain. 

Entering the first of just three rooms and turning left, one of the first works you see is Aspiration, a big canvas by Aaron Douglas, painted in 1936.

In the foreground are the manacled hands of slaves, while rising above them are three African American figures holding symbols of education, looking and pointing toward a bright future that’s represented by a conjunction of industry and tower blocks that could be Oz meeting Metropolis.

Aspirations, Aaron Douglas

A really strong piece, it’s key to the exhibition, which it also links to the RA’s other running show on Russian revolutionary art until 1932.

Here is the same hope for a better future; the same harking back to a rosy past and a hagiographic representation of tradition (in both cases, of agriculture) and the future – also in both cases, of industry.

Seeing them both is not obligatory, but doing so certainly benefits the understanding and appreciation of each one. 

Here, in the industrial category, we have work by Charles Sheeler – pristine industrial landscapes that come close to a sort of super-realism, including Classic Landscape from 1931, while Suspended Power (1939) is reminiscent of the some of the Russian industrial photography on display downstairs.

O Louis Guglielmi’s Phoenix from 1935 includes a portrait of Lenin within a landscape that is arguably close to di Chirico in terms of it use of symbols.

Cotton Pickers, Thomas Hart Benton

And indeed, it’s worth remembering that many of the artists shown here were themselves immigrants or first-generation Americans. The influences of European art are clear.

As are the political influences. Peter Blume’s The Eternal City (1934-37) is a savage, Daliesque take on Mussolini, while Philip Guston’s Bombardment (1937) is from the same year and covers the same subject as Picasso’s Guernica.

In terms of the natural landscape, there’s Alexandre Hogue’s Erosion No2 – Mother Earth Laid Bare (1936), which rather overdoes the point and was disappointing after works by Hogue we’d previously seen at the Pompidou in Paris.

Daughters of the Revolution, Grant Wood

Thomas Hart Benton’s pastoral paintings are more interesting – not least because one on display, Cotton Pickers (1945) treads a fine line between the brutal realism of picking cotton and sentiment: personally, I think he just manages to get it right.

But nobody could be in any doubt that Joe Jones’s American Justice (1933), showing the aftermath of a KKK lynching, is intended as anything other than a total damning of such racist murders.

Young Corn, Grant Wood

Yet the revelation here is Grant Wood.

Yes, yes … we all know and recognise American Gothic (1930). And it is a brilliant work that merits time spent looking at it in detail, including up close enough to see the brush work (it needs a clean, mind).

But this one painting has so come to define Wood that few of us – certainly on this side of The Pond – will be aware of his other works. From the stylised, pastoral landscapes such as Young Corn (1931) to the history painting of The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (1931), from his simply brilliant Daughters of the Revolution (1932) to the equally fabulous Death on the Ridge Road (1935) – which seems to nod to comic book art – Wood’s paintings are a major reason to visit this exhibition.

Death on the Ridge Road, Grant Wood

Deceptively simple on many occasions, his use of perspective and angles illustrates the facile nature of such a view.

I haven’t even mentioned the two works by Edward Hopper – and they are no disappointment either.

Indeed, quite the contrary. Hopper was a superb artist. Gas, from 1940, is an absolute star of a painting, with a haunting sense of mystery about it.

But this exhibition – first seen in Paris – offers wonderful opportunities to explore the work of artists we shamefully know little of in Europe.

A friend who saw the exhibition in Paris thought it clunky curated. I do know what they mean, but seeing it in the wake of the Russia exhibition downstairs firms up that curation.

Gas, Edward Hopper

And even if you set aside that, this is worth seeing if only because there are so many good – and a few great – paintings here that it would be criminal to miss the opportunity to see art that rarely (if ever) has left the US before.

We went on a Friday evening and, amazingly, it was not crowded, so we had the time to stand in front of any individual work and enjoy at our leisure.

I’d recommend seeing this and the Russian Revolution exhibition, but if you can only do one, do this – the standard of the actual works on display is, overall, far higher.

* America After the Fall runs until 4 June at the Royal Academy, London.

Not all revolutionary art inspires

Vladimir Lenin in Smolny

Picasso famously declared that “art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life”.

And that is certainly one of the things that art can do, but if that’s the sort of artistic experience you’re looking for, then don’t look toward the Royal Academy’s new exhibition, Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932.

For this centenary year of the revolution itself, the RA got in quick. And while there is much to recommend a visit, there are also flaws and clunky curation to contend with.

It would help, for instance, if there was some context provided for the events of October 1917: even a meagre note that Czarist Russia was no paradise on Earth would be useful, if only to remind visitors that the revolution did not come out of some sort of vacuum.

Instead, we begin with a room dedicated to visions of Lenin and Stalin – as though the roots of the revolution itself are in the cults of the leaders alone.

The defence of Petrograd

Actually, set aside whatever your political and philosophical views of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union are, and there are some fine paintings here: Issak Brodsky’s Lenin and Demonstration from 1919 is very good: the eyes give you a sense of a powerful and charismatic character, a real human being, in marked contrast to other more iconised portrayals.

It’s light years away from the later ‘socialist realism’. And much better. Indeed, the later, idealised ‘socialist realist’ paintings of agricultural workers are profound only in their blandness.

Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin’s painting of Lenin in his coffin (hidden from the world for decades because it was considered so controversial) inhabits the same world as other death paintings. Vladimir Lenin in Smolny, again by Brodsky but this time from 1930, is also excellent with its extraordinary sense of simplicity and lack of pomp.

Space Force Construction

The next room gives us works that seek to make industrialisation and industrial work heroic. It includes some brilliant photography – not least, Arkady Shaiket’s Construction of the Moscow Telegraphic Centre from 1928 – but also paintings that make workers look like robots. That might – or might not – have been deliberate, but it’s what we have in front of us.

One large canvas portrays three women in a cotton mill: not one of them has a facial expression or characteristic that marks her from the others. If this was supposed to convince people of the wonderfulness of the Soviet Union and industry, then it's difficult to see how it would.

There is some Kandinsky here and some Chagall – both of whose work is always worth seeing – and plenty of Malevich (I had enough at the Tate Modern’s 2014 exhibition, frankly, but this was new for the OH), although Landscape With Five Houses (1932) is worth seeing again.

Works like Space Force Construction (1921) by Lyubov Popova make you think positively of Constructivism.

There is an extraordinary design for a worker’s flat that has been recreated here – it still feels modern in the minimalist way that design TV shows love.

Construction of the Moscow Telegraphic Centre

However, it’s slightly surreal to view the displayed figurines in porcelain – revolutionary versions of Royal Doulton shepherdesses. The printed fabrics one does expect – but not these.

A wall in one room displays a series of portraits of cultural giants such as Prokofiev and Shostakovich, who pushed the boundaries of their art forms – yet there is with no real suggestion as to how we should view these in the wider context of the exhibition.

Given some of the mutterings on social media, by the sort of people who declare themselves experts on something without having actually seen it, it’s possible that the curators simply felt too wary of any backlash if they penned something that looked overtly positive, and have left such sections almost blank in terms of explanations. 

We have adverts, food coupons that are designed way beyond the strictly utilitarian and examples of works that celebrate the pre-revolutionary ‘Mother Russia’.

The final room is a disaster: there are some interesting works, but we end up with a logjam of viewers because there is (yet more) film to watch and the only way to see it is from a narrow passageway.

Adjoining this is the almost-final exhibit – a black box where you can sit and watch pictures flash by of people killed by the Soviet regime. Its black boxness seems to invoke the religious nature of Mecca. 

Tatlin's glider

Before this, though, Tatlin’s glider rises above much else on display – perhaps because one can view it without trying to understand or impose onto it anything overtly political. Displayed beautifully, on it’s own and turning gently beneath a dome, it conveys a sense of hope.

The Russian Revolution offered hope to many – including to artists. But the hope died as time passed: as counter-revolution caused war and suffering, and as the regime responded with a clamping-down on creative thinking and anything that might be consider ‘individual’.

The Defence of Petrograd, by Alexander Deineka (1928) is an epic canvas that sees blank-faced men head to the front to defend the new Russia. Above, on a gantry, wounded men return.

Alexander Samokhvalov’s painting of a shot putter has a sense of being extraordinarily modern, though painted in 1933.

The Shot Putter

Much is pure propaganda, but it’s also evidence that propaganda can be good art.

Film footage throughout includes Eisentein’s October. We face the question of whether the Odessa steps is propaganda? Well, yes. But  is it good art too? Absolutely! Just as Leni Riefenstahl’s films are. Will seeing works by such artists ‘convert’ you? That’s up to you and you alone.

Just as you can appreciate great Western religious art without becoming religious, so you can see this exhibition without taking on a specific political view (pro or anti).

However, there’s an extraordinary sense of modernity and vision throughout the exhibition that would make it difficult not to mourn the betrayal of the spirit of the revolution.

It’s a fascinating view – albeit a flawed one. Inevitably, it’s hard to see it through anything other than the prism of one’s own political leanings, popular perception and history books, but if you can manage to push beyond, there are rewards here – as well as things to deeply irritate.

Some of what is on view is poor. But some is very good indeed.

You have until 17 April to decide whether for not you wish to see it.

Royal Academy

Painted gardens prove a peaceful tonic to modern life

Water Lillies (1916-26) Monet

Picasso observed that “art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life,” so what better way to start a weekend than to spend time in a gallery?

And even more than that, how therapeutic would that art be if it was to be about gardens?

The announcement of London’s first art blockbuster of 2016 was met by much muttering that the Royal Academy was merely chasing after the money of a sort of art show dilettante.

There seemed to be a suggestion that Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse was not quite ‘serious,’ as art goes.

The Wall of the Vegetable Garden, Yerres, Caillebotte

Even the Daily Mail got in on the act with a sneery piece about ‘Monet mania’.

But none of that was going to put off someone who has, in recent years, experienced Damascene moments when it comes to both of those named artists.

So a week ago, after work, The Other Half and I toddled along to Piccadilly.

It must be said that, in terms of the Matisse element of the exhibition, it’s a bit of a disappointment.

Organised in conjunction with the Cleveland Museum of Art, some paintings are being seen in London but not in the States and visa versa.

Woman and Child in a Meadow at Bougival, Morisot

In the US, according to the catalogue (which is rather poorly printed in terms of colour reproduction, by the way), there will be three Matisse’s on view that are not to be found in London.

The two here are not his finest, although Rose Marble Table (1917), on a second look, does generate light, even though, by Matisse’s standards, the background is downright muddy. Bloody geniuses.

But that’s being picky. There are fascinating works here by myriad other painters – some of whom were new or little-known to us – and then there are the works by Monet.

The exhibition opens with two fascinating pairings: first, of flower pictures by Renoir and Monet and then, Renoir’s Monet Painting In His Garden At Argenteuil together with the painting that Monet is shown working on, The Artist’s Garden in Argenteuil (A Corner of the Garden with Dahlias), from 1873.

View of a Garden, Linköping, Johan Fredrick Krouthén

The first duo are highly conventional still life paintings; the second sees both artists moving toward what we recognise today as an Impressionist approach.

The exhibition makes much of the rise of recreational gardening among the growing middle class and its influence on artists, although some painters continued to be inspired by their own preference for rather more traditional vegetable gardening – a group that included Camille Pissarro, who painted his kitchen garden.

And indeed, Gustave Caillebotte did the same, with The Wall of the Vegetable Garden, Yerres (1877) proving a rare pastel work in such exhibitions, and very modern, with its stark geometry.

The Terrace at Méric, Bazille

In making sure that the link between recreational gardening and painting is clear, there are exhibits of seed catalogues, magazines and other gardening materials, plus a rather marvelous film of Monet painting.

There are painters represented from around the world, including the likes of Joaquin Sorolla, with his Spanish courtyard gardens dripping in heat and the cool of shade.

In such terms, Frédéric Bazille’s The Terrace at Méric (1867), though unfinished, reeks of the warmth and light of the south.

The Birch Avenue in the Garden of Wannsee ... Libermann

We have the chance to meet up again with other artists, including Berthe Morisot, whose beautiful Woman and Child in a Meadow at Bougival from 1882 is on display, while there are the joys on a single Manet in Young Women Among Flowers from 1879.

There are several fine works by John Singer Sargent, and then there are the Scandinavians, Karl Nordström, Laurits Tuxen and Peder Krøyer.

For me, Johan Fredrik Krouthén’s View of a Garden, Linköping (1887-88), stood out from these works.

Murnau II, Kandinsky

Light-dappled paths leading through tree-filled gardens are a particularly successful recurring theme – Max Libermann’s The Birch Avenue in the Garden of Wannsee Looking West (1918) is just one excellent example.  

Setting aside the fact that whoever named the next part of the exhibition ‘Avant Gardens’ (hohoho) should be given a serious seeing to (fnar fnar), we then move into an explosion of colour. 

And what is very clear is that the artistic leap forward from red and white borders to riots of colour was made possible, in part at least, by improvements in botanical science. 

Emil Nolde’s canvases of flowers bring extra vivacity to the exhibition, as does Kandinsky’s wonderful Murnau II. 

Munch’s Apple Tree in a Garden (1932-42) is a revelation if one is primarily only familiar with The Scream. 

Rose Marble Table, Matisse

We are even treated to three fascinating small pieces by Klee, while Klimt’s Cottage Garden from 1905-07 is unmistakable and Santiago Rusiñol’s Gardens of Monforte (1917) has wonderful light.

But then, as throughout this exhibition, is Monet – taking an extraordinary artistic journey in one lifetime.

And the three vast Water Lillies canvases, from 1915-26, 1916-26 and 1915-26 (left to right as they are hung) are staggering. Now all hanging in different US galleries, they are reunited here, in Europe, for the first time in the best part of a century.

Like the paintings at the Orangerie in Paris, they have the power to evoke a sublime, almost spiritual response. Their apparent simplicity belies their power and their beauty.

So forget the cynics and the snide snobs. Quite simply, time spent contemplating these works is worth the admission price alone.

Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse is at the Royal Academy in London until 20 April.