Matisse’s Big Riff

In 1915 Matisse, at the age of 45, painted his variation on Jan de Heem’s “A Table of Desserts.”   The Dutch still life, 80 inches long, depicts heaps of fruit and pies on an enormous table, accompanied by a lute and decorative objects, in front of some architectural structures that are partly obscured by, what else, a swath of red-maroon drapery.  The image is a fantastic, exuberant invention. You can say those grapes are so realistically painted, they make your moth water.  Not to mention that gashed-open pie.  Imagine standing in front of this huge painting, being entranced by its realism.

Now shake your head and tell yourself to wake up.  This is not realism.  Every object in this painting is painted to seduce you into thinking it’s real, but the whole pile of stuff, wall to wall, is assembled in the most contrived way.  Ask yourself what it would take to construct this scene out of three-dimensional material.

So, it’s not realism.  It’s a construction.  And all the more wonderful for being an invention!  That was 1640.

Now in 1915 Matisse sees this painting at the Louvre and feels so drawn to it that he has to do his own riff on this fantastic composition.  He will paint his own invention inspired by de Heem’s invention.  Why not!  It’s the 20^th century!

Matisse’s painting is also big, about 6 feet long.  I saw this a few years ago when the Art Institute of Chicago had a Matisse show.  Breathtaking.

Let’s play with this.

Stare at Matisse’s painting so that you see only

-the yellow areas

-the blues & greens

-the red bits

-the black

-where lines converge

-curved lines

-straight lines

This takes time.  Don’t rush. Do this over several days.

Now notice that yellow, orange and red come forward in the picture plane.  The cool colors—blue and green—recede.  Practice seeing that. Stay with it.  Some colors come forward, some recede, and what you get is a sense of depth. Foreground, background, transition. It’s powerful.

He does this without any of the techniques perfected in the Renaissance, which he knew very well.  No perspective, no chiaroscuro.

When you look at Matisse, you’re contemplating the painting and your own contemplation. It’s a bit much, isn’t it.

Ah, Matisse!

 

Henri Matisse, 1869-1954

Jan Davidsz. de Heem, 1606 -1684

 

https://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/table-desserts

 

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Richard Diebenkorn and the Kitchen Sink

Actually, the studio sink.  But the idea is the same: it’s not what you paint/draw, it’s how you see it. After I gave a demo with Stabilo pencil and china marker on gloss paper, I encouraged the students to set time aside to practice—or what from now on I will call “treat yourself to drawing.”   One student did just that.  Her pleasure in drawing, the fact that this really was a treat, is evident in the five drawings she produced in one day.  They remind me of Diebenkorn’s sink with their strong diagonals, the repetition of arched shapes, the chiaroscuro drama of light and dark, and the un-heroic nature of the subject matter. Diebenkorn’s studio sink, E.M.’s kitchen sink.In the Diebenkorn we see his much used tripartite composition, which we don’t have in E.M.’s drawings, but that’s a subject for another day. E.M. used china marker and Prismacolor marker on gloss paper to great effect.  The solvent in Prismacolors picks up—on gloss paper– the china marker’s black and creates a personal texture, a painterly quality, a feeling of transition and process.  There’s an urgency and concentration in these drawings that warrant the Diebenkorn connection. Pretty good company, there, Elizabeth!  Richard Diebenkorn, 1922-1993. Corner of Studio – Sink, 1963. Oil on canvas. 77×70 in

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Jenö Barcsay and Foreshortening

Foreshortening is frightening.

But we see foreshortened shapes all the time.  When you look at a face in a front view, the nose is foreshortened; when a person sits in a chair in front of you, the thighs and forearms will be foreshortened.  So, how can this be frightening?

When you draw a foreshortened limb and you really have to look at that shape, it looks weird.  It’s so frightening, you go into denial.  Can’t be, your eyes say. Your drawing hand will aid and abet this denial, by elongating what in fact is seen to be compressed.

When I announced that we would do foreshortening next class, a student said, “sounds like surgery.”  So I brought flowers to place near the Barcsay nude we were going to work from.

Jenö Barcsay’s book Anatomy for the Artist, makes a fine reference book.  I have blown up one of his reclining nudes to three feet.  When it’s tacked up on a wall, I can be very specific in guiding the students in the seeing process.  How do you approach this thing?  Well, first, you need to find a unit of measure.  Take the head.  Whoa, the head is half the picture! So counter-intuitive!  But that’s how foreshortening is.  It will drive you crazy, unless you have a disciplined approach that measures and aligns various points with one another.  It’s the only way, you can’t wing it.

One student, Isabella, insisted on working out her drawing with chiaroscuro effect. Quite an accomplishment.

Like upside-down drawing, foreshortening has the effect of focusing the mind. The students who did not completely work out their Barcsay nude, still benefited from the rigorous seeing process, and then produced satisfying drawings using various other images to work from.

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