Welcome to The Deep Dive, the show that extracts
the revolutionary insight from your source material,
offering you a shortcut to being instantly well
-informed. Today, we are taking an immersive
plunge into the extraordinary life and work of
Henri Matisse. And when you talk about 20th century
visual art, the conversation, well, it almost
always starts with two names, Pablo Picasso and,
of course, Henri Matisse. Right. Matisse in particular
is just one of the definitive figures. He's responsible
for these revolutionary developments in painting
and sculpture, drawing. He effectively charted
the course for the next half century of visual
aesthetic. Absolutely. And our mission today
is to follow a man who. really against all odds
and all expectations, just constantly reinvented
himself. A few times over. We're tracing the
path of a wealthy grain merchant's son who starts
out as a law student, of all things, and then
transforms from this meticulous traditional copyist.
The ultimate conformist. Exactly. Into a wild
beast of color. And then, after surviving cancer
and war, he finishes his career as a wheelchair
-bound master, creating these monumental, joyous
works with only scissors and paper. It's a journey
of, what, three profound transformations? At
least. And that half -century trajectory really
underlines his defining identity. His core contribution,
I think, remains his innovative, expressive use
of color. Oh, without a doubt. He learned to
wield it with the precision of a master surgeon.
And then there's his incredibly fluid original
draughtsmanship, whether he was... working in
painting, printmaking, sculpture, or collage.
He was always exploring that purest possible
relationship between line and color. Okay, so
let's unpack this. We have to start where, you
know, no great revolutionary ever should, in
the dull precision of the French legal system.
Henri -Emile Benoit Matisse was born in northern
France, Le Cateau Cambresi, on the very last
day of 1869. And the expectation from his father,
who was a successful grain merchant, was, well,
it was simple. Stability. Stability and convention.
That meant a solid education and a proper, respectable
career. And he followed that track, didn't he?
I mean, quite diligently. He moves to Paris in
1887 to study law. He qualifies, and then he
goes back north to work as a court administrator.
You just have to pause and imagine that. The
father of Fauvism, the man who would tear up
the entire rulebook of color, spending his days
managing paperwork and enforcing rules in a provincial
court. Right. The sheer psychological contrast
between that starting point and, say, his final
cutouts is. It's just staggering. It is. And
that structured, almost obsessive nature, that
commitment to process, it never really left him.
But the legal detour, it ended abruptly and fortunately
for art history in 1889. The appendicitis. He
suffered from appendicitis. And during his convalescence,
his mother brought him some art supplies, a beginner's
painting box, just to keep him occupied while
he recovered. And that right there is the discovery
of. A kind of paradise, as he later called it.
That's the moment. He picks up the brush and
the entire trajectory of his life changes. He
decides then and there he's going to be an artist.
A decision which, you know, naturally brought
profound disappointment to his very conventional
father. Of course. That tension between his early
conformity and his later radicalism is, I think,
really key to understanding his discipline. And
despite the radical choice. His initial path
was rigorously traditional. I mean, he spent
years in the formal French academy system. He
wasn't just whimming it. Not at all. first at
the Academy Julian under the highly conservative
William Adolph Bouguereau, and later at the prestigious
École Nationale des Beaux -Arts under Gustave
Moreau. This was not a quick dive into the avant
-garde. It was a slow, traditional climb. And
his early works, they really reflect this foundation.
He wasn't immediately experimenting. He was mastering
the language of the past. It's well documented
that he spent a huge amount of time in the Louvre,
copying four works by Jean -Baptiste Simeon Charnin,
the 18th century master of... still life. And
that focus on Chardin shows this real admiration
for detail and for structure. But his education
didn't stop there. He studied Poussin for classical
composition, Watteau for elegance, and Manet
for, you know, modernizing the canvas. And of
course, the Japanese art. Crucially, he absorbed
Japanese art, which would later have a massive
influence on his flattening of perspective. But
the greatest conceptual leap came from Paul Cezanne.
We often talk about color with Matisse, but the
source material really highlights that Cézanne's
sense of pictorial structure was his main inspiration.
It was. So what did he take from Cézanne that
wasn't just surface technique? Well, Cézanne
was trying to find the underlying geometry and
architecture of nature. He didn't just paint
apples. He painted the sphere, the cone, the
cylinder. The forms beneath the surface. Exactly.
For Matisse, this provided the intellectual scaffolding
he needed. He realized that structure didn't
have to mean detail. It meant organization. And
this foundation of rigorous structure is what
allowed him later on to be so expressive with
color without collapsing into total chaos. He
understood the rules. He understood the rules
before he broke them. And that structural curiosity
leads us directly to the great color revelation
of 1896. He's already working, but he's still
using a fairly dark sort of earth toned palette.
Very traditional. Then he travels to Belle Isle
off the coast of Brittany and meets the Australian
painter John Russell. This encounter is. It's
perhaps the single most transformative non -family
relationship in his entire life. Russell was
connected to the true radicals of the time. He
was friends with Van Gogh, wasn't he? Close friends
with Vincent Van Gogh. He actually gave Matisse
a Van Gogh drawing. Wow, imagine the impact of
that. Yeah. Holding a piece of raw, explosive
Van Gogh energy when you're still thinking in
browns and grays. Right. And Russell didn't just
introduce him to Impressionism. He directly taught
him color theory. Matisse later credited Russell
as his real teacher in color. And his style just
changed completely. He abandoned the somber palette
entirely for bright, unmodulated tones practically
overnight. It wasn't just a whim, though. No,
it was a technical shift toward neo -impressionism,
or divisionism. Russell was explaining how to
use pure color and let the viewer's eye mix it
optically. Like pointillism. Very similar. This
technique, the short, controlled application
of dots or dashes of color, is visible in his
early bright works. It shows that structured
approach to radical color use. He exhibits five
of these brighter pieces that year, and two are
immediately purchased by the state. So there
was validation early on. Proof that the shift
was noticed and validated, yes. So he's having
this moment of artistic validation, but his personal
life is... Well, it's getting more complex. He
already has a daughter, Marguerite, from an earlier
relationship. In 1898, he marries Emilie Noelle
Pereira, and they have two sons, Jean and Pierre,
and they raise Marguerite together. Emilie and
Marguerite became his frequent models, sort of
stabilizing the home front as he faced the chaos
of the art world. They provided that foundation,
but soon that foundation came under immense strain.
Matisse went into considerable debt, partly because
he was investing what little money he had into.
Masterpieces he couldn't afford. A Rodin, a Gauguin,
and that crucial Cezanne III bathers, all of
which he had to sell years later. But the real
crisis hit around 1902. The Humbert Affair. Which
wasn't just a private financial setback. It was
a huge public scandal. Precisely. It was a notoriously
complex and sensational swindle in France. The
Humbert family defrauded scores of people out
of millions of francs by claiming to possess
a fabulous secret inheritance kept locked in
a safe. And this somehow entangled Amelie's parents.
It did. They were essentially scapegoats or secondary
participants. But the resulting public shame
and the sheer weight of financial ruin left the
family completely devastated. And the practical
consequence was that Matisse, the struggling
artist whose career was just starting to turn
bright, suddenly became the sole desperate breadwinner
for seven people. It's a pressure cooker environment.
And that stress, that need to provide for a large
family amid public notoriety, it forces him to
make another tactical retreat. It's a fascinating
sort of counterintuitive move. It really is.
Between 1902 and 1903, the man known for pure
color adopted a somber, dark, and form -focused
style. Why? Art historians believe this was a
conscious effort to produce works that were more
conventional and therefore more saleable. He
was just trying to pay the bills. He was trying
to pay the bills. He also focused intensely on
sculpture during this time, completing The Slave
in 1903. This is the structuralist, practical
side of Matisse showing through. He adapts his
aesthetic goals to immediate material necessity.
You have to wonder how profoundly that threat
of financial ruin and the need for saleability
shapes the work of an artist whose signature
contribution will be pure radical color. Well,
it taught him resilience and gave him a clear
focus. When he finally returned to radical color,
it wasn't out of some frivolous experimentation.
No, it was an informed choice. A deliberate artistic
stance. The brief return to earth tones just
serves as a reminder that this revolutionary
lived a very grounded, anxious life. And that
grounded anxiety didn't hold the color back for
long. The period of financial stress gives way,
almost violently, to the explosion of color that
defines the first great modern movement he led.
Fauvism. Fauvism, meaning wild beasts, was a
movement built on the rejection of that restrictive
application of color theory we saw in Neo -Impressionism.
He'd done that, and now he was moving on. Right.
Matisse and Andre Duran were the undisputed leaders.
While the Sialistic origins were around 1900,
the key explosive period was very, very short,
1904 to 1908. The initial steps were a bit hesitant,
though. His first solo exhibition in 1904 at
Ambroise Villard's gallery. It didn't really
land. No, but then comes the transformational
summer of 1904. Ah, in St. Tropez. He spends
that summer painting in St. Tropez alongside
the neo -impressionists Paul Signac and Henri
Edmond Cross. This isn't just a vacation. It's
another deep immersion in structured color application.
And that results in luxe, calme volute. Exactly.
Luxury, calm, and pleasure. Visually, you can
still see the influence of divisionism, the controlled
dots of pure color. But the subject matter is
already classical and decorative, anticipating
his later nice period. But the real launch, the
big bang that put him in the movement on the
map, was the 1905 Salon d 'Automne. This is one
of the most famous moments of critical hostility
in all of art history. It was an incredible spectacle.
Matisse exhibited the open window and the sensational
woman with a hat. A portrait of his wife, Amélie.
Yes, and these works were defined by areas of
pure, shocking, unmixed color greens, yellows,
blues, used not to describe nature, but to express
feeling and structure. And the critic Louis Vassell,
walking through the room filled with these paintings,
he sees a traditional, tame, Renaissance -style
sculpture in the center. Right. And he utters
the unforgettable phrase. Donatello chez le fauve,
Donatello among the wild beasts. The name stuck,
instantly defining the movement. And the critics
were just in open revolt. The reaction was visceral.
The art was called grotesque, savage. One famous
critic declared, a pot of paint has been flung
in the face of the public. They just saw anarchy.
Total anarchy. It's hard for us now, you know,
we're a colletum to abstraction. But to grasp
how truly shocking it was for color to be completely
liberated from the local color of the object
was, it was a huge deal. But the critical shaming
was immediately mitigated by some very powerful
validation. The Steins. Gertrude and Leo Stein,
the great American patrons in Paris, recognized
the revolutionary quality immediately. And they
bought Woman with a Hat. And that purchase was
just crucial, wasn't it? Absolutely. To be denounced
so publicly and then championed privately by
such sophisticated collectors, it gave Matisse
the morale and perhaps more importantly, the
financial runway he needed to continue the experiment.
It signaled that this wasn't just madness. It
was the next frontier. What's fascinating is
that even at the height of all that controversy,
there were people who recognized the underlying
structure. The poet and critic Dioma Pollinare
called Matisse's art eminently reasonable in
1907. He saw the logic beneath the wild colors.
And the tension between wildness and reason persisted.
Even after Fauvism formally dissipated as a movement,
his works continued to cause an uproar abroad.
Oh, yes. Take The Blue Nude from 1907. When it
was exhibited at the 1913 Armory Show in Chicago,
it was so reviled that it was symbolically burned
in effigy by students. Burned in effigy, years
after he painted it, he was still the international
flashpoint for modern art. He was, and Fauvism
as a collective movement declined quickly after
about three major shows. But Matisse's personal
trajectory certainly didn't slow. He entered
a period from 1906 to 1917 where he developed
an even more rigorous, maybe cubist -influenced
style, emphasizing flattened forms and decorative
patterns. And this is where that contradiction
between the radical art and the artist's lifestyle
becomes so prominent. It really does. He was
physically active in the vibrant, often chaotic
Montparnasse scene. but he held himself apart.
He maintained this fastidious, almost boringly
conservative appearance suit and tie, beard neatly
trimmed, and kept strict bourgeois work habits.
He was the antithesis. of the bohemian stereotype
completely yet he was creating the most radical
art in paris and that rigor was essential because
his work was now being driven not just by formal
experimentation but by his absorption of global
non -western influences he started traveling
widely bringing the exotic back into his studio
the first major influence came from his trip
to algeria in 1906 this is where he began studying
african art and primitivism which deeply influenced
the way he treated the human body, stripping
it back to essential, powerful forms. You can
see it so clearly in New Blue. Then, around 1910,
the emphasis seems to shift to pattern and color
geometry. That's right. He viewed a major exhibition
of Islamic art in Munich, which was a revelation
for him, and then he traveled to Spain for two
months to study Moorish architecture and decoration.
The Islamic influence is so critical, isn't it?
It provided him with a system of decorative abstraction.
He realized that pure non -representational patterns
could convey a sense of depth, rhythm and life
without needing traditional perspective or shading.
This is where the term decorative stops being
an insult and becomes a serious artistic tool
for him. And these influences all culminated
in his highly productive and significant trips
to Morocco in 1912 and 1913. So what were the
specific artistic shifts that came out of those
Moroccan journeys? They led to a dramatic new
boldness. He started applying intense, unmodulated
color, meaning flat, pure swaths of paint. And
critically, he incorporated black as a color.
That's a huge shift. Before this, black was often
used for outline or for shadow. For Matisse,
black became an active, light -absorbing, balancing
element in its own right. He treated it with
the same respect as a vibrant red or a deep blue.
You can see this boldness in masterpieces like
Le Tellier Rouge from 1911, which is just a stunning
example of monochrome color used to create structure.
And Morocco also cemented some of his recurring
themes. The odalisques. those reclining women
set in orientalist interiors, and the introduction
of the goldfish in aquariums. Which became a
kind of symbol for him. A symbol of a tranquil,
self -contained world. It reappeared throughout
his career. And this global expansion and artistic
consolidation perfectly aligned with his relationship
with one of the most forward -thinking collectors
of the time. Sergei Shukin, the Russian textile
magnate. He was arguably the most loyal and important
early patron. And that relationship led to one
of his most significant creations. The two -painting
commission, La Danse, The Dance, and its companion
piece, Music, both completed in 1910. These are
just monumental works. They were designed for
Shukin's grand Moscow staircase. La Danse depicts
five nude figures dancing in a circle, and it's
filled with this incredible sense of frantic,
raw energy. Using only three colors. Just three.
The green of the earth, the blue of the sky,
and the reddish -orange of the bodies. It's an
ultimate simplification, a powerful expression
of primitive joy. And music, the companion piece,
it provides the necessary counterpoint. It does.
Instead of frenetic movement, you have five figures.
Completely static, almost meditative playing
instruments. The contrast between the sheer energy
of the dance and the profound calm of music demonstrates
his capacity for both the decorative and monumental.
All financed by a Russian collector who trusted
his radical vision completely. That trust and
that support system were so vital. And it brings
us to the two key elements of the Parisian art
world during this period. The patronage networks
and, of course, the inescapable rivalry with
public. The rivalry with Picasso, who was 11
years his junior, it's legendary. They were lifelong
friends, often trading works and visiting each
other's studios. But their competitive spirit
drove so much of 20th century innovation. It
really did. If we unpack their fundamental difference.
What really stands out? I think the key is observation
versus invention. Matisse remained fundamentally
tethered to nature and observation. Even when
he simplified a figure, he drew from a model.
His art always started from a visible reality.
Whereas Picasso... Picasso, by contrast, worked
primarily from imagination, from invention and
intellectual conception. He took the visual world
and radically reinterpreted it internally before
he ever presented it. And that difference...
shaped their shared subject matter. Both of them
painted women and still lives incessantly. Right,
but Matisse tended to integrate his figures and
objects into these richly patterned, fully realized
interiors where the wallpaper and the background
are just as vital as the figure itself. And Picasso
was more likely to just strip the figure bare
or explode it across the canvas, making the figure
itself the universe. Exactly. They both pushed
the boundaries of abstraction through simplification.
When Picasso developed cubism, Matisse responded
not by imitating it, but by doubling down on
flatness and structure, creating works like The
Red Studio. So they were always in dialogue.
Always looking over their shoulders, challenging
each other's breakthroughs. And the people who
financed this rivalry were often the same core
group of American patrons in Paris, specifically
the Steins. Gertrude, Leo, Michael, and Michael's
wife Sarah. They weren't just buyers, they were
cultural gatekeepers. Gertrude Stein famously
attributed the launch of her famous Saturday
evening salons, which became the epicenter of
modernism, to Matisse. That's right. She said
people initially came just to see his paintings
after the 1905 scandal, and eventually her living
room became the hub where collectors, critics,
and artists all mingled. Sarah Stein in particular
was intensely focused on collecting Matisse.
But the true bulk buyers. The financial stabilizers
for both Matisse and Picasso were the Cohn sisters
from Baltimore. Claribel and Etta Cohn. They
were phenomenal. Incredibly smart, somewhat eccentric,
and absolutely committed to the avant -garde.
And they acquired hundreds of works. Hundreds
of works by Matisse and Picasso, often buying
directly from the artists during their periods
of intense need. That collection is now the bedrock
of the Baltimore Museum of Art. Their early and
sustained belief provided Matisse with immense
financial and psychological stability. It's interesting
that despite all his success and notoriety, Matisse
was also dedicated to instruction. He created
the Academy Matisse. Yes, between 1907 and 1911,
his friends and patrons, including the Steins,
actually financed and organized this private,
non -commercial school. He was instructing young
artists, reinforcing that for Matisse, radical
expressive color was never divorced from disciplined
draftsmanship. Freedom is only possible through
mastery. A powerful statement about his philosophy,
exactly. And of course, that continuing Russian
connection with Shukin provided him the opportunity
to work on a grand... monumental scale. Shukin's
support meant Matisse could experiment with size
and complexity in a way most contemporary artists
simply couldn't. It wasn't just about selling
a canvas. It was about creating environmental
decorative pieces that redefined space. That
capacity to conceive of art as an environment
is something that surrounds and envelops the
viewer. It's a critical takeaway that really
foreshadows his final great period. That monumental,
structured period then gave way to a geographical
and stylistic shift in 1917 when Matisse relocated
to Simier, a suburb of Nice on the French Riviera.
And this move marked a definite relaxation and
softening in his work. It's important to contextualize
this, though. After the immense trauma of World
War I, there was a widespread European artistic
impulse for a return to order. Artists across
disciplines like Picasso and Stravinsky embraced
neoclassicism, seeking stability and recognizability.
And for Matisse, this translated into his popular
Orientalist Odelies paintings, replete with sumptuous
interiors, geometric patterning, soft light.
They were immensely popular and commercially
successful, but they did draw some criticism.
Some critics dismiss them as just decorative.
Indeed. They claim they lacked the intellectual
rigor of his pre -war work, but that, I think,
misses the point of his commitment to the decorative.
How so? He was upholding the classical French
tradition of figure painting, but using his unique
understanding of pattern and space. The use of
elaborate screens, patterned fabrics, and the
intense heat of the Mediterranean sun allowed
him to explore the structural use of light and
rhythm in a way that defied simple realism. So
they aren't just pretty. Not at all. They are
meticulously structured studies in interior spatial
relationships. Yet after 1930, we see another
shift, a new vigor and a bolder simplification.
He pulls away from the lush details of the odalisques
towards starker, flatter forms. That new energy
was largely driven by the massive commission
he received from Albert C. Barnes for the Barnes
Foundation in Pennsylvania. The mural, The Dance
2. Yes, completed in 1932. The sheer scale, 45
feet by 15 feet, forced him to simplify his forms
drastically, using the flat, unmodulated areas
of color that were necessary for such a huge
architectural piece. And this need for precision,
even in simplification, is evidenced by the documentation
we have of his process. I'm thinking of the large
reclining nude in 1935. The 22 progressive photographs
he took, yes. He meticulously tracked every stage
of the painting's evolution and sent them to
his patron, Etta Cohn. That detailed documentation
is just incredibly telling. It completely debunks
the idea that his simplification was lazy or
merely decorative. It shows an artist obsessed
with the process of achieving the perfect, final,
simplified form. Every line, every shape was
rigorously interrogated and adjusted through
22 different iterations. And this period of intense
creative output suddenly collided with immense
personal and political upheaval leading into
World War II. Alone is, well, it's a lot. It
was high drama. In 1939, after 41 years of marriage,
his wife, Amelie, divorced him. And this was
fueled by her suspicion that he was involved
with his young Russian emigre companion, Lydia
Delektorskaya. Yes, and the fallout was shocking.
Delektorskaya attempted suicide. She shot herself
in the chest. Unbelievable. Miraculously, she
survived without serious long -term injury and
returned to Matisse's side. But she didn't just
return as a companion. No, she became his true
collaborator and indispensable assistant. She
ran his entire household, managed his complex
business dealings, kept his extensive records,
and crucially, assisted him daily in the studio.
She provided the necessary structure for the
aging master to continue his creative freedom.
And then came the invasion of France by the Nazis
in June 1940. Matisse was in Paris, but he returned
to Nice. in what became Vichy France. His son
Pierre, who was running a successful gallery
in New York, begged him to leave Europe. He wanted
him to flee to Brazil. But Matisse was adamantly
principled in his refusal to leave. His reasoning,
which he expressed to Pierre in September 1940,
frames his decision as patriotic and deeply personal.
He said, If everyone who has any value leaves
France, what remains of France? He chose to stay,
even under occupation, aligning himself with
the fate of his country. This decision cemented
his status as a national figure, but it placed
him in a morally ambiguous position regarding
the occupied art world. The Nazis deemed his
work degenerate art, yet he was allowed to exhibit.
It was a complex political reality. While the
Nazis were aggressively purging degenerate artists
and art in Germany, they were comparatively more
lenient in occupied Paris. A form of cultural
appeasement. Exactly. So Matisse, along with
other former Fauves and Cubists, could exhibit,
but there was a moral price. All Jewish artists
were purged, and non -Jewish French artists had
to sign an oath confirming their Aryan status
to exhibit publicly. And Matisse was among those
who signed? He was, which allowed him to continue
working while others suffered. But while Matisse
maintained a somewhat isolated artistic life,
dedicated to work, his family was plunging headfirst
into the dangerous world of the resistance. Their
involvement was profound and just harrowing.
His son, Pierre, used his New York gallery to
actively aid Jewish and anti -Nazi artists escaping
occupied France. He organized that legendary
Artist in Exile exhibition in 1942. He did. And
back in France, his estranged wife, Amélie, worked
as a typist for the French underground and paid
a heavy price. She was jailed for six months.
And then there's his daughter, Marguerite. Her
story is just almost beyond belief. She was intensely
involved in the resistance, arrested and then
tortured almost to death by the Gestapo in a
Wren prison. Her resilience is astonishing. She
was sentenced to the horrors of the Ravensbrück
concentration camp. But she escaped. In a moment
of high cinematic drama, yes. While being transported
on a train to Ravensbrück, the train was stopped
during an Allied air raid. She seized the moment,
jumped from the train, and survived by hiding
in the woods. And she was eventually rescued
by fellow resistance fighters. In the closing
days of the war, it's a stark, powerful realization.
While Matisse sought sanctuary in his studio,
his entire personal world was consumed by the
brutal reality of occupation and sacrifice. This
period of confinement. both the country's confinement
under occupation and the trauma inflicted on
his family, it serves as the emotional and psychological
backdrop to his final, miraculous, artistic reinvention.
That wartime period and the family's subsequent
trauma directly preceded the physical collapse
that forced his final artistic shift. In 1941,
Matisse was diagnosed with duodenal cancer and
underwent major surgery. He survived, but the
complications left him permanently reliant on
a wheelchair, often confined to his bed. Conventional
painting and sculpture were now physically impossible.
And this physical necessity led directly to the
genesis of the cutouts, or decoupage. This wasn't
just finding a substitute, it was discovering
a whole new world. With the help of indispensable
assistants like Lydia Delektorskaya, he developed
this new art form. The process was simple, but
revolutionary. And he would then, using long
-handled scissors while seated or in bed, cut
them into shapes. These shapes were then arranged
and pinned onto the wall, forming compositions.
He described this period, despite his confinement,
as his second life. I love that quote. He said
this medium allowed him to wander through gardens
in the form of his cutouts. It's an incredibly
poetic description of turning physical limitation
into ultimate creative freedom. And the results
were utterly distinct. This medium is not quite
painting, but not quite sculpture. It's a synthesis.
It's painting because it uses color and composition.
But it's sculpture because the colors are defined
by the physical edge of the cut paper existing
in relief against the wall. He was essentially
drawing with scissors, allowing the negative
space of the wall to become as vital a compositional
element as the positive shapes he cut. It's true
that the technique had some utilitarian origins
much earlier. Oh, yes. The first recorded use
was in 1919 when he used cut paper designs to
plan the decor for Igor Stravinsky's opera Le
Chant de Rossignol. He also used them between
1937 and 1938 for preparatory work on sets and
costumes for the Ballet Russes. So they were
initially just planning tools, a means to an
end. Exactly. But the necessity of his physical
condition transformed the technique from utility
into his primary mode of expression. The first
major independent project was his female artist's
book, Jazz, published in 1947. Jazz consisted
of 20 striking, vibrant plates designed using
the cutout method. and while they were initially
conceived as designs for stencil prints the process
itself proved so exhilarating that by the time
he wrote the introduction in 1946 he had realized
the profound possibilities of the medium this
realization gave birth to one of his most powerful
philosophical statements from the period an artist
must never be a prisoner of himself Prisoner
of style, prisoner of a reputation, prisoner
of success. He was literally cutting himself
free from his own legacy as a painter. And that
intellectual freedom led to a dramatic increase
in scale. The cutouts became monumental. The
series of works he created in 1946, like Ocean
of the Sky and Ocean of the Sea, were mural -sized.
And these pieces, evoking the plant and animal
life of the Pacific, were directly inspired by
his earlier trip to Tahiti, showing how his whole
life's visual catalog was now feeding this final
medium. It's said that Lydia, his assistant,
would essentially direct his paper symphony,
loosely pinning the silhouettes, the birds, the
marine vegetation, the stylized figures onto
the walls of his room, turning his studio into
a giant, constantly changing, immersive environment.
One particularly famous piece, the sheaf from
1953, showing a bundle of stylized leaves, was
even adapted to ceramic for American collectors,
further blurring the lines between media. The
final great artistic and spiritual consolidation
of this cutout method was the Chapelle du Rosaire
de Vence, the Chapel of the Rosary, which he
worked on between 1948 and 1951. This was a deeply
personal project. Conceived and designed in honor
of his former wartime nurse, Monique Bourgeois,
who had since become a Dominican nun. This wasn't
just a painting project. It was total design.
He designed the entire environment. The stained
glass windows, the murals depicting the stations
of the cross, the priest's chasuables, the tabernacle
door, all planned meticulously using the cutout
method as the maquette stage. And he created
one of the most serene and vibrant sacred spaces
of the 20th century. Using his most radical late
career technique. The windows, designed using
simple, powerful shapes of blue, yellow, and
green, just flood the interior with pure, joyful
light, the ultimate synthesis of his lifelong
obsession with color. He completed his final
painting in 1951, and his final sculpture was
finished the year before. Until his death in
1954, the paper cutout was his sole focus. His
absolute final work was the design for a stained
glass window for the Union Church of Pocantico
Hills near the Rockefeller Estate north of New
York. David Rockefeller confirmed that the maquette
for that very window was hanging on his bedroom
wall when he died. It was installed posthumously
in 1956. Even on his deathbed, the last thing
Matisse was reaching for was light, structure
and pure color. The institutional recognition
was swift. The Matisse Museum was established
in his birthplace. Le Cateau, in 1952, two years
before his passing. And the Municipal Musée Matisse
in Nice, where he spent his final productive
years, opened in 1963 and holds one of the world's
largest collections of his work. Henri Matisse
died of a heart attack at the age of 84 on November
3, 1954, and is buried in Nice. But his influence
flows directly into the heart of the American
art market, thanks to his son. Pierre Matisse.
His son established his modern art gallery in
New York City in 1931, operating it for nearly
six decades until 1989. And this gallery was
an absolutely vital bridge between the European
avant -garde and the American collecting public.
A huge bridge. He exhibited major European artists
like Joan Miró, Marc Striol, Alberto Giacometti,
and Jean Dubuffet, often introducing them to
the U .S. for the very first time. The Matisse
legacy extended beyond creation and into curation.
And while the artistic legacy is one of light
and joy, we do have to briefly acknowledge the
shadows of history that still affect his provenance,
the issue of Nazi -looted art. Right. This is
an ongoing, painful process that underscores
how political turbulence permanently scars art
history. During the Nazi years, numerous artworks
by Matisse were seized, looted from Jewish collectors,
or sold under duress. We've seen some significant
restitutions in recent years. Works like Limer
Rose were returned from France's Pompidou Museum
to the heirs of its rightful owners. Even pieces
discovered in the famous Munich art horde, like
Femme Assise, have these complicated, troubled
provenance dating back to the war. German Lost
Art Foundation currently lists 38 artworks by
Matisse in their database. So the work of tracking
down and returning these masterpieces continues
today. It does. And finally, let's close with
the perfect anecdote that encapsulates the legacy
of a man who constantly challenged the foundations
of perception right up until the very end. Here's
where it gets really interesting. In 1961, seven
years after his death, one of his famous gouache
cutouts, Le Bateau de Boat, from 1954, was hung
in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It was
mistakenly displayed upside down. Wait. A major
work by Henri Matisse, one of the twin pillars
of 20th century art, hanging in the Museum of
Modern Art, the global temple of modernism, was
upside down? For how long? 47 days. 47 days.
Almost seven full weeks passed before an astute
observer realized the work was oriented incorrectly.
So what does that mean for the legacy of Henri
Matisse? I think it means that his final art,
born from confinement and necessity, achieved
a level of pure abstraction and structural liberation
so profound that the traditional rules of up
and down, right and wrong, just, they ceased
to apply. He liberated color and form completely.
He didn't just redefine painting. He redefined
the fundamental relationship between the viewer,
the shape, and the canvas, forcing us to constantly
question what we think we know. A legacy so powerful,
they named a crater on Mercury after him in 1976.
From provincial court administrator to a named
feature on another planet, what a deep dive.
Thank you for joining us.