We are in an era of alt.matisse: Everywhere there are exhibitions that show the French master side by side with his visual descendants.
“Matisse/Diebenkorn” at the Baltimore Museum of Art just closed to almost universal praise, pairing 90 figurative and abstract paintings by two artists widely separated in time and place that nonetheless slapped viewers in the face with their intimate resemblances.
And now the Montclair Art Museum has effectively turned its entire premises over to Henri Matisse and the American artists who claim his parentage — including one New York artist, Sophie Matisse, who does so quite literally (she’s Henri’s great-granddaughter).
Montclair started off with “Janet Taylor Pickett: The Matisse Series,” which opened in September and features brilliantly colored collages by the former Newark art teacher who found all sorts of resemblances between the French artist’s life and her own African-American experience (Matisse’s love of ultramarine blue reminded her of indigo plants, for example).
Then there’s “Inspired by Matisse,” which just opened, with 53 works by 42 American artists, all from Montclair’s permanent collection. Both shows are intended to contextualize the new “Matisse and American Art,” which includes 19 Matisse paintings, prints, drawings and sculpture alongside 44 works by 34 different American artists, some working as early as the first decade of the 20th century.
You might begin to think Matisse is in everybody, and in a way that’s true. Bold and often unrealistic color, an astringent line, savage simplification and a knack for fencing in primary colors with pure black are all Matissean tropes that are common to generations of Modern artists.
But Matisse’s influence in fact is much deeper than that. It’s in how he raided global traditions for visual inspiration, how he became besotted with rich patterns, often from textiles, and especially in how he visualized the role of the artist: decisive, responsive, private and austere.
It’s all so opposite to his great rival Pablo Picasso, whose aggressive, public personality and celebrity lifestyle contrasted so threateningly with the discreet studio life of a trained lawyer who discovered art while recuperating from appendicitis.
Matisse’s vision appealed to Americans almost right away. One of the distinctions of “Matisse and American Art” is its emphasis on the very early years: It starts off with a 1907 Italian landscape by Walter Pach reminiscent of Matisse’s Notre Dame series; Pach was the American who helped get Matisse into the famous Armory Show in 1913. There’s a Max Weber, “Apollo in Matisse’s Studio,” done in Matisse’s school in 1908, and even a beautiful 1907 nude drawing by Sarah Stein, who along with her brother and sister, Leo and Gertrude, was an early collector, student, and close friend of the artist.
“Everybody remembers the Armory Show for Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Nude Descending a Staircase,'” says Montclair curator Gail Stavitsky, “but the critics were actually much harder on Matisse.” Symptoms are one thing, but the source of an infection smells.
All these correspondences set up a continental wave for Matisse long before anyone took American art seriously. You can see right away at Montclair how wrong that was. A wonderful still-life by Arthur Dove, another by Morgan Russell, a “red studio” echo by Stuart Davis, and paintings by that most gifted husband-and-wife, Marguerite and William Zorach, demonstrate how quickly the Americans understood the master’s out-of-time genius.
Matisse visited the U.S. several times (Picasso never did). As time went on the American connection deepened, especially as World War II approached. Henri’s son, Pierre, opened a New York gallery in 1931 that became phenomenally successful. Later, in a sort of French double whammy, Pierre’s wife divorced him and married Duchamp, and they spent time in a farmhouse around Clinton, New Jersey. These crossed connections seem to bear fruit in Sophie Matisse’s work, which is at once colorful like her great-grandfather’s and conceptual like Duchamp’s– one of her paintings is “The Conversation,” an oil copy of a self-portrait by Matisse with his wife Amelie, only Sophie has left out the figures to paint the window alone.
“Matisse and American Art” opens up in big pictures by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Tom Wesselman, and a hilarious line-up of eight “goldfish” (a theme Matisse returned to again and again) by contemporary artist John Baldessari, each of which is labeled as a soup. A small room in the corner is devoted to Matisse’s “window” theme (that’s where Sophie’s “The Conversation” hangs). These things ring like fulfillments of an early promise.
That Matisse’s influence continues to be so potent over time is what sticks with the viewer. At some point his work came to represent a kind of gold standard, changed into an emblem of itself, almost a digital representation: This is what great art looks like. All the Pop artists see it like that. And yet, it still has its sensual punch.
Matisse and American Art
Where: Montclair Art Museum, 3 South Mountain Ave., Montclair
When: Feb. 5-June 18. Open 12-5 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday
How much: $12 adults, seniors and students $10, children under 12 free. For more information see www.montclairartmuseum.org or call 973-746-5555
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