Back turned to Open Window by Matisse - Essay Example

?Running Head: EVALUATION OF A PIECE OF ART Seated Woman, Back turned to Open Window (1921-1923), Matisse Seated Woman, Back turned to Open Window (1921-1923), Matisse When discussing the artist Henri Matisse, the discussion will primarily revolve around color. He is best remembered as one of the principle artists of the early 20th century Modernist period in which art was revolutionized away from pure representation and towards a notion of expressionism through color. In examining and exploring one if his works, Seated Woman, Back turned to Open Window (1921-1923), the viewer can see a refined use of color and geometric form, softened to reflect the aesthetics that he was using during the time he painted the work. The piece has no known written history and is part of a body of work done in order to continue the direction of his work post 1919. The oil on canvas work is 28 ? inches by 36 ?. It is part of the Clark Brothers collection having been acquired by Stephen Clark for the Sterling and Francine Clark Institution, commonly referred to as The Clark, in Williamstown, Massachusetts. However it was then purchased by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts through the John W. Tempest Fund (The Clark 2011). Henri Matisse was born in 1869 in Le Cateau-Cambresis, Nord, France. In 1889, after a bout with appendicitis, his mother gave him a set of paints for something to do while he recovered (Matisse & Flam, 1995, p. 225). The act of painting became an obsession for him and he developed his work throughout the rest of his life. Matisse had experienced a great deal of difficulty in creating a career that was respected and appreciated. A founding member of the Fauvists with Andre Derain, his use of color and light provided expression that was predominant over the use of detail. The artists from Munich who had supported the development of Expressionsim, Kandinsky and Jawlensky, as an example, believed that the work of 1905 that was most worthy of their attention was coming from the Fauves, their eye now to France in order to observe the advancement of their movement (Spurling, 2005, p. 87). His work post 1919 represented a softening of his approach and a ‘return to order’ in which he once again looked back to the Masters, such as the Dutch painter Vermeer of the 17th century, for inspiration. Vermeer worked with exploring the use of light within his work (Wilson, 2009, p. 50). The piece Seated Woman, Back turned to Open Window (1921-1923), was from a collection of work in which he was examining the uses of color and form towards representation but through the lens of expression for emotional context. The piece was sold in 1947 through a catalogue by Durand-Ruel that offered the work for fifteen thousand dollars along with works from Manet, Degas, and Renoir which situated Matisse in the position of being one of the modern masters (O’Brien, 1999, p. 56). In the work Seated Woman, Back turned to Open Window (1921-1923), Matisse uses linear movement in order to direct the eye towards the focal point of the woman. The horizontal lines converge with the vertical in order to frame the exterior view as the shutter acts as a frame for her as she sits in front of it. Repetitions of rectangular shapes within the window are mimicked in the horizontal brush strokes of the water. Their shape has been morphed to be more organic, but still reflect the frame that holds them. While the work is representational, it holds a bit of the abstract as the forms and shapes create the imagery of what they reflect, rather than precisely reflecting reality. The brush strokes are expressive and reflect the Fauve aesthetics while revealing his return to a more classic form and holding their representative value. The painting is somewhat flattened, the roundness of the objects pushed back with the abstraction of their essence visually defined by shape and color. The refined use of primary colors, predominately of blue and red, are enhanced with touches of an ochre yellow in order to create interest and definition. Light frames the woman’s face through the use of a slash of light color that appears to give a rounded curve, but is an artful use of placement in order to insinuated shape. A lightened hue of the ochre yellow creates a thick line that represents the vertical window sash, creating the illusion of sunlight against the blue of the ocean and sky and defining it against the blues of the shutter. A slightly darker hue of the ochre yellow helps to create a balance of perspective and pull the window sash towards the foreground. The importance of the color that Matisse used can be viewed through the way in which light creates a unifying force within the work. According to Bock-Weiss and Matisse (2009), “Many Matisse works begin with a rectangle of luminosity…(objects) are as much different chromatic events as they are different planes, unified by the equal light emanating from each of them” (p. 114). While the colors are all primary, the jarring nature of primary color is softened by the use of light that unifies them in such a way as to not appear stark, but soft and blended throughout the work. In regard to color, the use of blue is the most used color, but it is the red that punctuates the work in order to direct the eye towards different elements. Tones of color also provide balance as the lighter tones of the greater portion of the painting balance the lesser parts of the foreground. The foreground is done in tones that are deeper than those used on the window and then slightly deeper yet than those used on the view from the window. Matisse uses vertical and horizontal lines which are oriented with the female figure in order to continue creating balance within the work. The lines almost converge towards the woman, leading the eye through the painting to its focal point which is an unconventional position for a composition. This requires manipulation of the eye in order to both provide balance and lead the eye in the direction of the female figure. The vertical and horizontal lines almost provide the direction of the eye to the focal point, yet it is the bolder use of color that finishes the balance. The last moments of the movement of the eye is locked towards the color where the lines do not fully provide for the illusion. The painting works as a funnel to the left corner, a relatively smooth transition from the lighter view through the window to the foreground woman as she is seated in front of the view. The repetition of patterns in the wall under the window is oriented towards the female figure, the curves of the shapes that form her representation providing a reflection of those patterns. A viewer’s initial response to this painting might be that it looks almost common. The work is simply a view of an ocean that is rendered with little detail or attention to perspective with a woman seated in an almost awkward position within the framework of the canvas. While the exterior view is of a tropical setting, because of the way in which the woman is dressed, the theme of a tropical view is somewhat negated. However, the point of the painting does not seem to reside within its subject matter, but within the use of color and the way in which foreground and background are balanced by the use of light and color. The story of this painting is less within the content of the imagery and more within the context of the placement of color which provides order to the substance of the imagery. The subject matter, then, becomes less important than the exploration of the nature of color, in the expression of imagery rather than the image itself. The use of paint can be defined more than from the perspective of how it is used to create a representation but is more importantly examined for the way in which the color informs the eye about the subject. The work of the early artists of the Modern Era was defined by a search for meaning that was beyond imagery and representation. The work was concerned with evaluating the effect of color and shape in regard to expressing the idea of representation with providing evoked emotional context that was beyond the image. The work is highly successful in creating a sense of balance through the use of color. The differentiation of the foreground and the background is brilliantly defined through the intensity through the choices of the hue. In addition, the formality of the seated woman and the wall behind her contrasts the natural view from the window, creating a disconcerting imbalance within the theme. However, the theme of the work is far less important than is the theme of the color work within the painting. In looking at the Modern Era paintings, the exploration of the use of medium towards expressing emotion over representation is emphasized by the lack of importance that is put into the subject of the work. The use of light within the piece seems to be the exploratory theme of the work, by exploring the way in which the forms are presented and highlighted by the use of color as the primary concern of the artist. Matisse created work that was interesting in regard to the way in which the color was used within the work, but in truth, the subject matter was of very little interest. In looking at Seated Woman, Back turned to Open Window (1921-1923), the viewer does not have much interest in knowing anything about the woman in the painting, nor about the origins of the view. The work is not particularly successful, for this writer, in the way in which it affects the viewer. While Matisse was brilliant in the way in which color was used in order to create emotional context from which to base the expressions that he was aiming to present, the paintings themselves do not create the excitement that this writer most often prefers when viewing pieces of art. Matisse is not a favorite, but that in no way diminishes his accomplishment in moving the world of art forward in creating work that focused on meaning over content. The expression of emotions through the strokes of the brush, the color evoking a response over the story of the imagery, changed the way in which art was created. Matisse’s work, Seated Woman, Back turned to Open Window (1921-1923), reveals his brilliance in the use of color to express the appearance of representation. The work is a study in balance as much as it is a study in color as he uses both color and form to create an unconventional composition. In this work, Matisse represents the aesthetics that he was working to achieve in his paintings. References Bock-Weiss, C., & Matisse, H. (2009). Henri Matisse: Modernist against the grain. University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press. Matisse, H., & Flam, J. D. (1995). Matisse on art. Berkeley: University of California Press. O'Brian, J. (1999). Ruthless hedonism: The American reception of Matisse. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. Spurling, H., Matisse, H., & Spurling, H. (2005). Matisse the master: A life of Henri Matisse, the conquest of colour, 1909-1954. New York: A.A. Knopf. The Clark. (2011). Sterling and Francine Clark Institution, Inc. Accessed at http://www.clarkart.edu/visit/content.cfm?ID=20 Wilson, S. (2009). Henri Matisse. Barcelona: New York: DAP Distributed Art Publishers. Read More