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Matisse in Morocco
| Article
# : |
17622 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1990 |
1,866 Words |
| Author
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Jane Addams Allen
Jane Addams Allen is an award-winning art critic who now
resides in Cornwall, England. |
"Painting is a very difficult thing for me - there is always this struggle …. It's so sweet when it comes effortlessly." It was a dark day in Tangiers on March 16, 1912, when Henri Matisse scrawled these lines on a postcard to Gertrude Stein.
What irony! There was Matisse, at forty-two the master of the arabesque, in Morocco, the home of the arabesque multiplied and intertwined in a gorgeous array of Islamic patterns and colors. But instead of reveling in the sights and colors of the Casbah, he was imprisoned by an interminable rain. All he could paint for weeks were still-lifes set up in his hotel room.
When the good weather came, his spirits soared. Matisse in Morocco: The Paintings and Drawings, 1912-1913 at the National Gallery in Washington evokes a blissful mood where beauty is in the very atmosphere, enveloping the most ordinary things in its transforming aura. Including twenty-five drawings, this evocative exhibition, a USA-USSR joint project, documents Matisse's two sojourns in Morocco - from late January to mid-April 1912, and from early October 1912 until mid-February 1913. These sojourns mark an important transition in his career.
Matisse had been attracted to Islamic art for years before these two trips. Beginning in 1906, the colorful tiles and textiles of Islam had been the building blocks of his new concept of decorative painting. As Gauguin had urged, he studied rugs to discover the secrets of abstract color. Making the space of his compositions ever flatter, Matisse borrowed Islamic textile partners to transform domestic salon scenes into grand designs - for example, his 1911 Family of the Painter, now at the State
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