Distiller of Sunshine

The mark of modern art, like that of modern science, is continuous experimentation. The results often seem to aim more at style obsolescence than at great masterpieces rivaling those of the past. But as ism tumbles after ism, the greatest accolades have gone to those artists who have painted through the revolutionary styles of their times and arrived at a style uniquely their own. Few have achieved a more luxuriant signature than Henri Matisse.

A dozen years have passed since Matisse died at the ripe age of 84, at a time when it could be fairly said that he was--with Picasso--France's most popular artist. He had had two museums (at Le Cateau-Cambresis, his home town, and in Cimiez, above Nice) devoted to his works; his oils had commanded five-figure prices for more than 20 years. Currently, the first comprehensive retrospective of Matisse's work since his death, totaling 345 works in all media, is traveling across the U.S.* The exhibition (see color pages) magnificently highlights his achievement; it also documents what a long, arduous path he followed.

Purity and Joy. For artistic success was not something that came easily to this provincial grain merchant's son. His first student efforts look as if they had been painted in a damp attic. He laboriously copied Louvre masterpieces, lasted only a few days as a student of Academician William-Adolphe Bouguereau, who told him, "You will never learn how to draw."

But the young artist persisted. He went to London to study the sunset Turners, which expanded his palette. He encountered Japanese prints, which banished shadows and freed him from tunnel-vision perspective. He tinkered with impressionism, dabbled in pointillism, and became the leading colorist of fauvism. Eventually, he discovered Matissism.

What he discovered, said Matisse, was "something that was always the same and that, at first glance, I thought to be monotonous repetition. It was the mark of my personality. I made an effort to develop this personality by counting above all on my intuition. I said to myself: 'I have colors, a canvas, and I must express myself with purity.' " Once he had found his signature, he repeated it with joy. To those who criticized his variations on the nude and the interior, he replied: "No two fig leaves are alike, yet each one cries 'fig tree.' "

Seraglios & Poufs. His performance on canvas shows that in finding his own style, Matisse had simply let his left hand tell him what his right hand should do. In 1911 and 1912, he visited sunny Morocco and, like Delacroix 80 years before him, fell in love with its Moorish seraglios and sultry colors. He let his brush line course over his canvas like an enchanted cobra. His arabesques were forever caressing a woman's contours as he painted the harem dream, the half-naked houri sprawled in diaphanous pantaloons, the odalisque sinking into an interlace of poufs, screens and rugs. To charges that he was painting erotic nudes, Matisse replied: "It is not a woman; it is a picture."

Matisse meant his art to soothe, not shock. Said he: "I dream of an art that is pure, calm and free of disturbing subject matter--something like a comfortable armchair in which one can recover from physical fatigue." One of his early teachers, Gustave Moreau, had predicted: "Matisse will simplify painting." He did, without sacrificing delicacy. Said Matisse: "I want to reach that state of condensation of sensations which constitute a picture." He simply distilled sunshine.

Conquering the Spectrum. For 14 years before his death, Matisse suffered from intestinal cancer. In his town house in Nice, he painted from his bed or wheelchair, surrounded by women--his beautiful secretary, two models, a nurse, cook and maid. Even though an invalid, he still drew in masterly style using a 10-ft. bamboo pole with a crayon on its tip. With this and a pair of scissors, he created his last great masterpiece, the Chapel of the Rosary at Vence. With cut-out colored paper he designed stained glass, tile stations of the Cross, even abstract chasubles. In carving his colors with his hands in forms that startlingly foretold hard-edge abstraction, Matisse conquered the spectrum with his arabesque line. It was more than a homage to God. The chapel fulfilled in lines of color the lines of poetry that he loved best, a phrase by Baudelaire, which Matisse himself had used to title several of his works:

La, tout n'est qu'ordre et beaute,

Luxe, calme et volupte.

* Now at U.C.L.A.'s new Dickson Art Center, it goes next to Chicago and Boston.

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