Ives-Alain Bois on Matisse - Term Paper Example

8 May 2000 Ives-Alain Bois, On Matisse: The Blinding: Visible Analysis and Non-Visible Spectacular Matisse’s compositional devices and/or strategies: in a sphere of influence To begin with, let us present our own viewing of compositional devices and/or strategies, as they appeared in Yves-Alain Bois essay On Matisse: The Blinding. As it will be specified further on, Matisse’s milieu has very controversial character to bring up the right interpretation, and his activity can be divided into approximately three (or even more) parts. But, some optical effects, visual devices, and influential strategies are quite remarkable when we are focused on Matisse’s phenomenon, such as following: time, composition, space, color, and light; additionally, also the inner dimension of a painting can be stated as a concrete but overall finding of the non-spectacular Matisse’s visual system. These, previously stated, will be combined in our perspective with such from the first period of Matisse’s life, according to Bois, circulation, expansion, and tension. Firstly, time’s density becomes to disappear as a singular unity within Matisse own pictorial system. Each from these paintings has its own dispersed time in its own world, Matisse has its own understanding of temporality depicted, and each of beholders must be aware of their own time’s “persistence.” Similar to an ambivalent visibility of his works, time of his works disappear, constructing its temporality of a higher order, impersonal and spiritual – …like a “good armchair.” Then, composition itself must be treated as one of the most inevitable factors, with its Arabian abstract ornament, but circulating patterns. Matisse transferred its role to an invisible object of total presence, supported by his status quo understanding of means of art. However, second layer have to obtain depth and plural emotionality, with its completely non-imitating naturalism of spiritual order. Furthermore, my pictorial space was being completely eternalized, in the actor’s own words. Avoiding a fixation of natural image in its faster passing by, Matisse’s art belongs not to “easel” painting, but to “memory” painting. Trying to achieve better and long-term fixations, artist focused himself on “pictorial fields of irresistible meanings,” which could be considered as being persuasive enough for both beholders and creator. Moreover, color and light will be presented in our focus a bit further; however, we should state that Matisse’s colors have a powerful compositional impact, created accordance or cordial of visual forms. Colors are pretended to be treated as the conditions in which visual code of lines can be perceived by the spectators, so colors as a container for both semantic parallels and compositional importance. Finally, circulation, expansion, and tension regarded by the author as visible functions in Matisse’s creativity. Factually, circulation may be understood as a compositional unity with that turnabout character of its movement; then, expansion marks a constant intention of the spatial expanding in Matisse’s early paintings, which used to be presented mainly without “holes;” tension is a “corporeal density,” which Matisse avoided lately, it can be understood through an imperative of sensitive expressions instead of peripheral incorporating of the beholder in terms of his late theories of art. Visual devices and strategies: producing effects Supposedly, being influenced by such optical strategies as those discussed previously, spectators can feel themselves “discharged” from not only singular forms of time and space, but from dictatorship of visibility itself, due to Matisse concerns on at least two-fold nature of each artistic gesture. Painting itself constructs an overall effect, being an instrument for the deconstruction, insisting not on its visibility, but rather non-visible order of eternal noumenas. His friends were used to discuss his works as sunlight imitations, colorful, pure and hot as beams. But pictorial beams of Matisse has a little in common with such of Impressionists (Manet, Monet, Renoir), Neo-impressionist (Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne), pointillists (Serat), or divisionists (Signac), because Fauvists were striving to achieve a synthetic form which could produce an eternal impression of Tension, Circulation, and Expansion that is why, supposedly, hot active colors similar to a sun spectrum were represented massively by an artist, for example, in his Nice period of activity. Matisse’s standing in the space of the painting When Matisse says he puts himself in the space of the painting, it means that he does not accept the distinction between three subjects in painting: visual object, artist himself, and spectator. Making singular forms of time and space disappeared, Matisse insists on an immersion effect when all visual “agents” are simply become parts of this narration. This visual effect of image which suddenly comes through in extending of its limits (or, vice verse, when its creator enlarges limits of his physical actuality), creates a multi-contextual and plural space of enigmatic immersion. His surface panting describes a history of the total elimination of all active agents or subjects of with the process of emancipating or discharging both artist and his pictorial forms. According to the Bois, Matisse used to liberate himself from being focused on some unique or typical objects, only configurations or relations between space, time, light, and colors can be considered as essential. From the viewer perspective, paintings were treated bigger than they were, with permanent invading potential. They were said to be alive inside themselves, due to Matisse constant animating imperative. As for the painting, composition forms, colors, light, and lines were organized as a “breath” of necessity in an imaginary world. Additionally, that which are depicted, human figures of “corporeal density” as well as decorative patterns (of Persian miniatures, for example) differ from a perspective point of view through their principles of disperse existence, laying like a massive symbolical and colorful body of immaterial harmony (“Harmony in Red”, “Harmony in Yellow”). Lack of focus in Matisse’s concentration Then, we will speak primarily about focus and concentration in Matisse’s works and after that will concentrate on issues of lack of focus, absentmindedness, and inattentive attention and dispersion. Actually, these concepts have such a similar trait within themselves: lack of clarity and single focusing. As subject was divided into three parts, artist’s concentration cannot be linear and intensive on its surface. These optical effects of lack of focus, absentmindedness, inattentive attention and dispersion must show us an importance of non-visibility, hidden spiritual side of the things, which gives them an opportunity for shaping. Accordingly, lack of focus was initiated by Matisse to clam a lack of the principal object in a field of visuality; absentmindedness can be described through a lack of focus as a specific trait of Matisse’s belief in multi-dimensional structure, with its slaw and inattentive character. Dispersion above all: (”Keep on moving!”) due to the artist’s intention of getting higher with a means of rather unconscious feelings than rational implications of sharpened object in its natural forms’ imitations. Active but non-spectacular: role of color in Matisse’s compositions In the very title of Yve-Alain Bois’s book On Matisse: The Blinding we could an emphasis on a principal role of color in what author pretends to name “Matisse system.” But, in order to answer this question about the role of color in Matisse’s composing, we need to divide his milieu into three parts: pre-Fauve, Nice, and late period. Also, we will have in focus two types of relations within a single composition: partial and holistic perspectives. Firstly, artist’s system consisted of Circulation, Expansion, and Tension, according to Bois. Therefore, color in composition was similar to a “flash of lighting,” with its blinding effect. “Hot” active colors were building up a composition till the Moroccan period was over. Then, second Nice’ period was characterized by the author with avoiding from Impressionist “natural” reasoning of color as physical outcomes of real sunshine, because his gamma becomes rather Minimalist, with its vivid black and white monochromatic contrast. However, Matisse’s colors of that period (red, blue, green and yellow) indicate his visual experiments with non-spectacular light as an inner rhythm or tempo for a composition, “holding on” a beholder, without “strict” visual effects. Third, post-war period of Matisse painting activism in colored space must be described in terms of mise-en-abyme applying, as it appeared in his drawings of 1935 (for example, “Windscreen”). On the contrary, role of Matisse palette in composing could be analyzed also through partial or holistic relations within a painting. Specifically, partial relationship is evident from 1890 to 1920s, when vivid monochromic patterns or fragments must be taken into account. Such naturalist effect with sun’s imitation was substituted by color decorativism in his later paintings (for example, “Dance”), which, according to late Matisse, had no need for being exemplified but had to serve as a channel for a message delivery to the beholder. It is also significant that colors in Matisse system were polysemantic and helped to involve a spectator deeply into a feeling of a painting. On Matisse: conclusions Afterwards, we should put up our considerations on applying the above principles, such as Matisse’s compositional devices and strategies, visual effects on the viewer, his “space of the painting,” along with focus, concentration, and color functions in composing, – for painting in general. Accordingly, Yve-Alain Bois’s contextualization of the whole period of the French Modernism in history of art was being depicted perfectly, with constant citations and famous artists’ influential argumentation. Author is talented enough to put his prominent “object” (Henry Matisse) somewhere in between academic and avant-garde movements of the 20th century beginning: Impressionist and Post-impressionist, pointillist and divisionist, Cubist and abstraction, realist and traditional arts of Muslim Orientalism – all these “artificial” directions were presented professionally. In such a context we could explicate some innovations in the history of Western art concerning Matisse’s milieu. As it appears to me, almost personally, Matisse was “animated” through a thorough analysis of his masterpieces’ visual dimension as rather a theorist of art, than practically oriented artist. In fact, his long-term impact on the theory of art can be seen in his well-known idiom about art as a “good armchair” and through his “spectator oriented” theory of a painting’s perception. Understanding expressiveness as a decorative approach, he focuses not only on artist-painting relations, but also on spectator activity in understanding art form. Matisse’s three-fold conception of painting reasoning liberated visual art from “surface” intensity, expanding it in depth, or inner perspective (comparatively to a “good” bourgeois “armchair”). Also, Matisse provided a clear distinction between psychologies of surface, decorative, architectural, and easel paintings, giving them his Circulation, Expansion, and Tension. Furthermore, he adores non-spectacular art, full of immersive potential, sunny and colorful, with its permanent absentmindedness of dispersed focus. Avoiding natural imitation of Impressionism, he tried to create pictorial lighting, which made the spectators blind, with an assistance of his active “pure” colors. Therefore, Bois’s essay as a giant Matisse’s encyclopedia, where we can easily find out hundreds of the artist’s visual innovations during the different period of his life: pre-Fauve; Fauve; Nice; post-war. Works Cited: Bois, Ives-Alain, (October, 1994) On Matisse: The Blinding: For Leo Steinberg. Volume: 68, Publisher: MIT Press, Pages: 60-121. Read More