Matisse's Serpentine - Essay Example

Matisse’s the Serpentine Henri Matisse began an astonishingly prolific era in 1907. Although recognized for his colorful paintings, Matisse also created extraordinary sculptures. A Matisse sculpture was defined by new sexuality, unorthodox anatomical features, and was two-dimensionally inspired. Exaggerated anatomy and two-dimensional sources were uncharacteristic for an artistic who, before this period, relied solely on the presence of models. This is evident by the photographed model Matisse used for the sculpture The Serpentine (1909). The methods for distorting this sculpture were greatly influenced by the issues he encountered while painting. “I sculpted as a painter. I did not sculpt like a sculptor,” Matisse explained in 1947 when referring to the effect his painting had on being a sculptor.1 The tension between a three-dimensional sculpture and a two-dimensional image freed him to interpret and invent bodily form. In the process, he limited the flesh and increased the space between arms and legs, magnetizing the viewer’s gaze to the negative space and the smooth counters from varied angles. These elongated limbs and “linear, sinuous contours” are depicted in his Dance paintings and helped define The Serpentine.2 The Serpentine is currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art. After seeing the sculpture on the Internet, the enormity of the sculpture is overwhelming. When approaching The Serpentine at the museum, it is at eye level. The black of the sculpture is contrasted by a white base. The sculpture is a nude woman with her right arm behind her back and crossed legs leaning against a balustrade with her finger on the lips. The image reminds one of a supermodel, with extremely thin elongated arms and legs, complimented by curvaceous hips and long hair. There is a slight bored smile on the nude woman’s face, but inviting as well. The Serpentine evokes emotions of envy, desire to be like her, and awe. Surprisingly, unlike other sculptures with smooth textures, The Serpentine has a rough texture. Lines and indents make up the whole sculpture. It appears like Matisse awoke one morning and made a large clay model in the span of a day. The molded sculpture is not smoothed out. It materializes as a primitive model. This is The Serpentine most striking feature. Matisse preferred the female nude to anything else. He stated in 1907, “What interests me most is neither still life nor landscape but the human figure. It is through it that I best succeed in expressing the nearly religious feeling that I have toward life.”3 The figure Matisse created in The Serpentine, less than two feet tall, is an example of this interest. The thin loops of rolled clay form the limbs and body. The face has influence of African art, due to the exaggerated neck and rounded head shape. The nude seems to be at rest leaning against the balustrade. However, the feet are anxious, legs crossed, and the body twisted, tense and ready to move, as if in a dance. The left finger at her lips and the right arm resting behind her back insinuates flirting, suggesting further activity. An interesting thing about the nude’s pose is the total lack of modesty. The nude does not try and hide her nudity, but seems completely comfortable and confident with herself. Since Matisse was a painter, he was familiar with painting nudes. Most of Matisse’s nude paintings show women very content with their sensuousness. For example, Bathers with a Turtle (1908), The Dance, Blue Nude (1907), do not depict nude women as prostitutes, but rather doing ordinary activities in the nude. His paintings can be seen as provocative, but all nudes can be perceived this way. Matisse painted his nudes with dignity and his sculptors were created in the same manner, such as The Serpentine. The flawless balance of intensity and calm in Matisse’s Serpentine is a technique that he used well. The power of being nude and its sexual connotations portrays the intensity, while the dignity portrays the calmness of the nude woman.4 The position of the nude depicts her nonchalant attitude, yet also shows intensity. However, the intensity does not just come from her nudity. The intensity can be attributed to her calmness, while being nude. Most women would not portray calmness while being nude. Vulgarity, sexual prowess, embarrassment, shyness, and lack of confidence are what most expect of a nude woman. The balustrade the nude woman leans against brings some intensity to the sculpture. Many critics believe the balustrade is phallic in nature.5 When looking at the sculpture in this way, the intensity is high. A slim woman leaning against a huge phallic balustrade is definitely controversial. However, the sculpture is in the eye of the beholder. Once pointed out, the balustrade does look phallic. My first impression was the nude leaned against an ancient eroded Greek column. Whatever the nude is leaning against, she is not afraid. The nude looks very comfortable leaning on whatever the viewer deems the balustrade to be. The calmness and intensity are exaggerated in this nude by not portraying what a real model might look like. This is the influence of using photographs instead of live models. Matisse wrote in 1933: When I wanted to get rid of all influences that prevented me from seeing nature in a personal way, I copied photographs… We are encumbered by the sensibilities of the artists who have preceded us. Photography can rid us of previous imaginations. Photography has very clearly determined the distinction between painting as a translation of feelings and descriptive painting.6 Matisse is eluding that in a photograph the emotions a nude can emit like vulgarity, sexual prowess and embarrassment, are filtered out. Matisse then could depict how he feels a woman should look and not what a real woman or society thinks they should feel. This became Matisse’s view on the relationship of photography and nature. He believed that photography could be used to study nature because photographs show us nature by removing all emotions.7 Matisse spoke of this in 1933: One gets into a state of creativity by conscious work. To prepare ones work is first to nourish ones feelings by studies which have a certain analogy with the picture, and it is through this that the choice of elements can be made. It is these studies which permit the painter to free his unconscious mind.8 He applied this idea largely to sculpture, often taking his knowledge from photography, sculpture, and painting to form a never-ending cycle of lessons between the mediums. It must be taken into consideration that although Matisse used photographs to remove emotions, his sculptures and paintings are not devoid of emotion. The Serpentine depicts a nude woman with a slight smile on her fact. It is clear by looking at the sculpture the nude woman feels bored, calm, and even a little flirtatious. Not only does The Serpentine appear to have emotions, but also evokes emotions in viewers. This leads one to believe that Matisse removed the original subject’s emotion to insert the emotion he wanted the world to see. In 1908 Matisse explained why he created art: Why, to translate my emotions, my feelings, and the reactions of my sensibility into color and design, which neither the most perfect camera, even in color, nor the cinema can do. ... [Artists are] useful because they can augment color and design through the richness of their imagination intensified by their emotion and their reflection on the beauties of nature, just as poets or musicians do.9 Matisse did not want to reproduce nature or nudes. Any first year art student can sketch a model. Matisse wanted to create art depicting emotions only he could see. The photograph that inspired Matisse to create The Serpentine was of a voluptuous nude posing toward the front with her legs crossed as she leans on a studio balustrade. Matisse took the photograph of the curvaceous nude and made an over exaggerated thin woman. If placed side by side, a connection could not be made between the two. The photograph was turned into a sculpture of an embellished skinny, tall woman leaning upon a balustrade. The only similarity between the photo and sculpture is the pose. Matisse’s sculptures and paintings evolved throughout his career.10 During the time he was sculpting The Serpentine, Matisse was growing as an artist. Matisse only sculpted during 1900-13 and again in 1922-32. During this period Matisse used the exaggerated style of impressionism. This could be because of the influence by impressionist and post-impressionist painters like Cezanne, van Gogh, Gauguin and Paul Signac.11 A new term defined as fauvism labeled Matisse’s new art. Matisse took impressionism and built upon it. The result was the use of bright vivid colors in his paintings and the embellishments of his sculptures. This is what makes fauvism more extreme than other styles of art of the time. Matisse only sculpted a limited about of time. In an undated quote Matisse explained: I took up sculpture because what interested me in painting was a clarification of my ideas,’ he said. ‘It was done for the purpose of organization, to put order into my feelings and to find a style to suit me. When I found it in sculpture, it helped me in my painting.12 Artists tend to express what they feel by using various mediums. Matisse expressed himself with painting. However, sometime during 1900-13 and again in 1922-32, Matisse must have felt something wrong with his painting technique. It could have been the influences mentioned above, or even conflict in his life. Whatever the reason, Matisse felt the need to organize his thoughts and feelings in a three-dimensional medium in order to continue his favorite medium of painting. Matisse sculpted The Serpentine the same year as he painted The Dance. Both the sculpture and painting depict nudes that were elongated.13 If Matisse used sculptures to organize his thoughts in order to paint better, The Serpentine helped arrange his thoughts into The Dance. The Serpentine and The Dance have wide open spaces between the long limbs. This leads to the impression of a light atmosphere. The emotions running through these two art pieces are similar to viewers. Even though The Dance illustrates multiple nudes and The Serpentine depicts one nude, the similarities are too many to ignore. Matisse preferred the female nude. When Matisse created a female nude, they were not depict realistic. Even in his paintings Matisse illustrated women: In languorous attitudes some creatures with lovely hips sleep, dream; one, standing, stretches herself, her hands crossed behind her head; others play the flute; at right, a svelte girl throws her arms behind her, enlacing in this fresh collar the head of her lover; The center of the composition, a wild round…the pink of the bodies closely enveloped in a halo of complementary violent, harmonize and blend.14 The Serpentine represents these types of women. Matisse portrayed women as he desired them. The women in his art are primitive, far from the proper bourgeois madams that commissioned his art. Matisse explained in 1908 “What I dream of is an art of balance, purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter, a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.”15 Matisse achieved through his art what every man desires; the simplifying of a woman. Instead of being complicated or depressing, like the women in his life, Matisse created his women to be soothing and real. In the evolution of Matisse’s career, African art had an enormous impact on his art. Matisse’s influence by African art can be observed in The Serpentine. In 1906, Matisse made his first trip to North Africa.16 Upon going to North Africa, Matisse began collecting African art. Just like the cube influence in the overly simplified bodies of African art, Matisse shaped The Serpentine with elongated limbs, thick neck, and rounded head. The lengthened limbs of The Serpentine have the S type shape of African art. The extremities twist and contort like one piece of cord. The space in between gives the illusion the sculpture is airier than in actuality. Even the thick parted hair is reminiscing of the wavy African art depicting women. The curves of the arms and limbs make the nude woman contort cartoon fashion, but in similar fashion to African art. African art has a blocky, underdeveloped body style. This simplified body style is used in The Serpentine. The simplifying of the body in The Serpentine creates a more emotional response in the viewer. If The Serpentine would have been proportionally perfect, the emotions of envy and desire might not be summoned in a viewer. A proportionally perfect sculpture would aesthetic pleasing to a portion of the population, but unattractive to the other part. The Serpentine is a unique piece of art, which needs to be studied before being easily dismissed as so often happens with real images. Matisse had an ulterior motive in sculpting The Serpentine abstractly. He wanted the viewer to enjoy the sculpture as an individual. Matisse did not want only Frenchmen to enjoy this sculpture, but all cultures. In 1951, Matisse exerted: If the spectator renounces his own quality in order to identify himself with the spiritual quality of those who lived when the work of art was created, he impoverishes himself and disturbs the fullness of his pleasure--a bit like the man who searches, with retrospective jealousy, the past of the woman he loves.17 If Matisse had made a smooth, detailed sculpture that realistically portrayed the woman in the photograph, then one culture could have claimed pleasure through the viewing. Instead Matisse made it where everyone could enjoy The Serpentine, because cultural lines are not defined in this sculpture. The Serpentine is a memorable sculpture. Matisse used his technique of copying photographs to depict what he envisioned to create an unforgettable piece of art. The influence of women and African art can be visualized in The Serpentine. In the end, Matisse created a sculpture to be enjoyed by all and for generations to come. Bibliography Elsen, Albert E. The Sculpture of Henri Matisse. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1972. Flam, Jack. Matisse: a Retrospective. Macmillan Pub. Co., 1988. ----. Matisse: the Man and His Art. London: Cornell UP, 1986. ----. Matisse on Art. London: University of California P, 1995. Kosinski, Dorothy. Matisse, Painter as Sculptor. New Haven: Yale UP, 2007. Monod-Fontaine, Isabelle. The Sculpture of Henri Matisse. London: Thames and Hudson, 1984. Nirdlinger, Virginia. "The Matisse Way. Forty Years in the Evolution of an Individualist." Parnassus, 3.7 (1931): 4+. Stevens, Mary, ed. The Orientalists: Delacroix to Matisse. European Painters in North Africa and the Near East. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1984 Read More