Lessons from a Coffee-Table Art Book

Years ago, back when I was still ordering from ERHB’s newsprint catalog, I got the notion to buy a large coffee-table book of works by the Impressionist artist Henri Matisse just because the works of his I knew were cool and the book was $4.95. Once I got Matisse, I was so moved by what I read and saw that I wrote an essay about it, printed it, and then folded it and placed it between the pages of the book. I had no intentions of submitting it for publication; it was just a record of how much this impulse cheap buy impressed me. Now that I have my own blog, I can publish it here.

While reading the Edward R. Hamilton Bookseller newspaper catalog, I saw a monogram book (a coffee-table art book of an artist’s complete or best works) of Henri Matisse. It was a 280-page hardcover full retrospective of his life’s work — for only $4.95. Usually, hardcover coffee-table art books by major artists retail for $50.00 or much more.

 You wouldn’t call me a Matisse fan, or an Impressionist or post-Impressionist or early-20th century modern art connoisseur. When it comes to two-dimensional visual arts, I prefer illustrators like Edward Gorey, or inventive graphic arts like by M.C. Escher, or ultra-modern pop art like Keith Haring’s work. I’m not normally into so-called “fine” arts at all. Sure, I think Van Gogh and Georgia O’Keefe are great, and I try my best to know the work of African American painters like Lois Jones and Romare Bearden. However, I have no desire to collect posters or books with reproductions of the works of “the great” painters.

Henri Matisse’s latter-period work is often reproduced in posters, postcards, and other mediums. The joyful, colorful silhouette figures in works like “Icarus” fit my taste for stylized and vivid imagery that’s far removed from realism but intellectually and/or emotionally stimulating.

When I saw the Matisse book in the catalog, I knew enough about Matisse to know that it would be full of paintings he did before and beyond the work that appealed to me. However, for $4.95 I figured I could just ignore what I didn’t like and enjoy my favorites by the artist. Again, less than five bucks for the work of an artist that’s considered one of the greats of the last century is nothing to turn my nose up at. So I ordered the book.

After I received the Matisse monogram, I set aside time to go through the pictures of his work from the beginning, just to build up anticipation for the works I really wanted to see, which were mostly paper cut-outs and book illustrations that were created during the 15-year period before Matisse’s death in 1954. The artist was born in 1869, so he had a long life of work (mostly oil on canvas) that preceded that period.

Most of Matisse’s early work involved learning and employing the innovative methods of European painters of the late 1800s who were moving away from the old hardcore “realistic” style of painting that ruled the art since the Renaissance. Matisse bought work by Van Gogh and Cezanne and studied their style and that of Monet and Renoir. With these influences, he and a group of other painters in the early 1900s created work that used the unorthodox methods of multiple vivid colors and broad brushstrokes to render subjects like still lifes and portraits.

Further on in his career, Matisse borrowed the hard lines of “cubist” painters like Picasso and patterns from African and Persian art (particularly wall decorations and textiles) and added it to his tool chest of non-European traditional methods to portray traditional subjects with some experimentation in composition — he didn’t follow the old rules of perspective that dictated where to place an object, like a table, in the painting to show depth or distance — and representation — he didn’t always attempt to portray the subjects in a “realistic” way.

In one painting, “The Dance,” a group of nude figures seemingly float together as they hold hands and prance in a circle. In some paintings, like “The Dance,” Matisse drew human figures in a stylized, simple-looking manner that today we’d see as animation-like; in other paintings, Matisse left out details such as human facial features. In many of his works, he moved away from euro-traditional representation and composition, but it seemed like he would go back to just maintaining the creative methods of color, lines and strokes while keeping the subject matter traditionally “recognizable.”

As I looked at Matisse’s progress toward his latter years, it occurred to me that it seemed like in his mind, there was a problem that needed to be solved. The problem was how to break completely with both traditional methods and traditional subject representation. The cut-outs and illustrations of his later years are how he solved the problem. He seemed to be held back not by his painting methods, but by painting itself. Once he found new tools, not ones borrowed from other artists or cultures, to create his two-dimensional art, he let go completely. And he found his own style, not one traceable to other places. His own. And many people today consider his late work his best work.

I hope it doesn’t take most of my life to find my own tools to create my own art in my own way. I want to be able to let go of the demands of convention, yet still create something that moves someone. I know what I’m supposed to be doing, just like Matisse did. Like him, I’ve got to figure out how to do it. How to see and solve the problem because the solution will set me free.