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Matisse
The Negress
1952-1953
This is the black dancer, Josephine Baker, queen of the Roaring
20s and 30s,
famous for appearing on stage wearing nothing but a belt of
bananas.
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Henri Matisse
CUT-OUTS
by Gilles Neret
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The artist confided to Alfred Barr that, no longer able to move
or swim, he had, thanks to his gouache cut-outs, surrounded
himself with water and extraordinary gardens, pinning the
maquettes of his works to the walls of his appartmentand spending his days contemplating and transforming them. These
are scenes and landscapes that go "beyond" any scene or
landscape and even any "work". The "beyond" evoked by the last
works took the form of that poignant and yet serene adieu
The Sadness of the King. This
picture is the last great pictural effort by Matisse to be made
in pasted gouache cutouts. It is the last salute by the artist -
who is represented by the sombrely clad king, guitar in hand -
to the world around him, to the themes he loved. Matisse has
drawn them all around him, down to the last woman dancer, as if
to have himself buried with them like an Ancient Egyptian Pharao.
"You are going to simplify painting!", the prediction of his
master, Gustave Moreau, had been fulfilled to the letter, in the
brass fanfares of Fauvism and in the final sustained chord of
the cut-outs. At the approach of death, Matisse was proud that
he "could at last sing like a child following the impulses of
his heart from the top of the mountain he has climbed". As
Baudelaire had already stated: "Genius is just childhood to
which one can return at will."
But let us leave the last word to Matisse himself, writing, at
83, to his dear friend Rouveyre: "My survival in my works, that
I desire... I never think of it, for, having thrown the ball as
best I could, I cannot be certain whether it will fall on land
or sea or into that precipice from which nothing ever returns."
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The Sadness of the King |
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Mimosa |
The Screw |
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Polynesia, the Sky, 1946 |
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Polynesia |
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The Bees
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Matisse Henri
(see collection) |
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Matisse
drawing from his bed, in his room in Nice, 1950 |
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