Art: Matisse, His Art and His Textiles

The exhibition Matisse, His Art and His Textiles. The Fabric of Dreams will be on display at the Royal Academy of Arts in London and then the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York this year. Dr. Janet McKenzie describes it on Studio International:

The premise of 'Matisse, His Art and His Textiles' is that textiles were 'the key to (Matisse's) visual imagination'. Hilary Spurling has recently published the second volume of her scholarly and impressive biography of Matisse, which inspired this current exhibition. In her catalogue, she admits that a comprehensive study of the role played by textiles in Matisse's career is not possible; nonetheless, she puts forward a most convincing argument for the importance of fabrics in his work, which, she argues, stimulated and released his creative powers. The exhibition aims to show that the essential properties of fabrics enabled Matisse to break through to a new level of pictorial reality. In the past, art historians and critics have emphasised Matisse's genius as a colourist; his decorative materials have been viewed in the general realm of 'oriental influence'. John Berger, however, captured the essence of his powers: 'He clashed his colours together like cymbals, and the effect was like a lullaby.'

Category: Art