tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/matisse-10036/articles
Matisse – The Conversation
2021-11-22T19:08:36Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/171817
2021-11-22T19:08:36Z
2021-11-22T19:08:36Z
Henri Matisse was an artist of colour and sensuous line; an unerring eye until the end
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433016/original/file-20211121-17-11x30p7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C2685%2C3237&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Henri Matisse, Still life with green marble table (Nature morte à la table de marbre vert) 1941. Oil on canvas, 46 x 38.5 cm. Centre Pompidou, Paris, MNAM-CCI, purchased 1945 AM 2591 P.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Succession H Matisse/Copyright Agency 2021. Photo: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / Philippe Migeat / Dist RMN-GP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Matisse: Life & Spirit, Art Gallery of New South Wales</em></p>
<p>I saw work by Henri Matisse (1869-1954) for the first time when I was seven. It was a tapestry, Polynesia, newly acquired for the collection of the Art Gallery of NSW. I wondered at the simplicity of the clean, white, marine shapes floating on blue squares. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/whats-on/exhibitions/matisse/">Matisse: Life & Spirit</a>, the gallery’s summer blockbuster, shows how this rhythmic elegance was achieved. It includes the original maquette of that tapestry, called Polynesia, the sea, as well as its partner, Polynesia, the sky. </p>
<p>They hang in the final room of the exhibition, a celebration of the creativity and unerring eye of an old man, ravaged by illness. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433004/original/file-20211121-27-1oaunk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C5%2C3711%2C2332&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433004/original/file-20211121-27-1oaunk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C5%2C3711%2C2332&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433004/original/file-20211121-27-1oaunk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433004/original/file-20211121-27-1oaunk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433004/original/file-20211121-27-1oaunk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433004/original/file-20211121-27-1oaunk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433004/original/file-20211121-27-1oaunk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433004/original/file-20211121-27-1oaunk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Henri Matisse, Polynesia, the sky (Polynésie, le ciel) 1946. Gouache on paper, cut and pasted, mounted on canvas, 200 x 314 cm. Centre Pompidou, Paris, MNAM-CCI, from Mobilier national et Manufactures des Gobelins, de Beauvais et de la Savonnerie since 1975 AM 1975-DEP 13.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Succession H Matisse/Copyright Agency 2021. Photo: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / Bertrand Prévost / Dist RMN-GP</span></span>
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<p>His hand that once defined feminine beauty with a single curving line could no longer draw, but, as an accompanying video shows, he remained a master with scissors and used a stick to direct assistants where to place the shapes he cut. </p>
<p>Matisse’s Polynesia was the distilled memory of his visit to Tahiti in 1930. Although he had made some drawings at the time, he was never the kind of artist to paint a travelogue. Rather, years later in war-torn France, he took elements of that place of sun, sea, light and colour to make it his own. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-the-tate-to-the-moma-cross-continental-perspectives-of-matisses-cut-outs-32931">From the Tate to the MoMA: cross-continental perspectives of Matisse's cut-outs</a>
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<p>Polynesia also gave Matisse the technique of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivaevae">tivaevae</a> – traditional Polynesian appliqué fabric – which he adapted to make cut-outs which Justin Paton, one of the exhibition’s co-curators, has called “one of the great flowerings of modern art”.</p>
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<span class="caption">Henri Matisse, The sorrow of the king (La tristesse du roi) 1952. Gouache on paper, cut and pasted, mounted on canvas, 292 x 386 cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Centre Pompidou, Paris, MNAM-CCI, purchased by the state, 1954 AM 3279 P. © Succession H Matisse/Copyright Agency 2021. Photo: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / Philippe Migeat / Dist RMN-GP</span></span>
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<p>The greatest of these is the exquisite melancholy of The Sorrow of the King: a self-portrait in extreme old age and a contemplation of the music of death. It is so large, so fragile, it sits enthroned, shielded by glass, overseeing the final room of this very large exhibition. </p>
<p>It shares this room with the wild music of Jazz, Matisse’s first substantial series of cutouts devised as an illustrated book. Here, the individual pieces are placed as though they are musical notation, giving them a syncopated rhythm on the wall.</p>
<h2>Matisse’s chapel</h2>
<p>The architect Richard Johnson designed the exhibition, a masterly homage to great art. </p>
<p>This homage is most obvious in the exhibition’s centrepiece, an evocation of Matisse’s last great work, the <a href="https://www.theartpilgrim.org/pilgrimages-2/the-chapelle-du-rosaire-de-vence">Chapel of the Rosary</a> at Vence. </p>
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<span class="caption">Installation view of ‘Matisse: Life & Spirit Masterpieces from the Centre Pompidou, Paris’ exhibition, on display at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 20 November 2021 – 13 March 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo © AGNSW, Mim Stirling</span></span>
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<p>Matisse designed the chapel, built between 1947 and 1951, as a tribute to the Dominican nuns who nursed him during his illness, and as an exploration of how spiritual values let in the light after the darkness of war. </p>
<p>Despite being a Christian chapel, the forms evoke both nature and plants from other cultures, so it becomes more of a universal affirmation of spirituality. </p>
<p>Here, the gallery’s central court has been modified to match the size and proportions of the chapel. The artist’s drawings on the tiles are screened in a video loop, while the walls are hung with full size studies for the stained glass windows. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433020/original/file-20211121-19-1v4kfy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433020/original/file-20211121-19-1v4kfy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433020/original/file-20211121-19-1v4kfy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433020/original/file-20211121-19-1v4kfy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433020/original/file-20211121-19-1v4kfy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433020/original/file-20211121-19-1v4kfy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433020/original/file-20211121-19-1v4kfy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433020/original/file-20211121-19-1v4kfy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Henri Matisse. Blue nude II (Nu bleu II) 1952. Gouache on paper, cut and pasted on paper, mounted on canvas, 103.8 x 86 cm. Centre Pompidou, Paris, MNAM-CCI, purchased 1984 AM 1984-276. © Succession H Matisse/Copyright Agency 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Succession H Matisse/Copyright Agency 2021. Photo: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / Service de la documentation photographique du MNAM / Dist RMN-GP</span></span>
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<p>There are the two collage designs for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chasuble">chasubles</a> (a priest’s outermost liturgical vestments), while the entrance shows both an evocation of the chapel’s exterior and a wall quoting the plain white tiles of the interior. </p>
<h2>Matisse the sculptor</h2>
<p>Thanks to the Centre Pompidou’s generosity in lending many works that have never travelled so far before, it is possible to see here the full range of Matisse’s art, including sculpture. </p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Installation view of ‘Matisse: Life & Spirit Masterpieces from the Centre Pompidou, Paris’ exhibition, on display at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo © AGNSW, Mim Stirling</span></span>
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<p>It is one thing <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/may/12/art.art">to read</a> of the ongoing influence of his Back series (four bronze sculptures of female backs) on his decorative paintings, but an altogether different experience to see these large bronze relief works of the bodies of powerful women. </p>
<p>Other, smaller, sculptures serve as a reminder of the importance of African art to Matisse as he was exploring form. This was more than a search for the exotic. </p>
<p>Rather, Matisse seems to have been on an endless quest for new ways of seeing and then incorporating what he found into his world.</p>
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<span class="caption">Henri Matisse, Still life with magnolia (Nature morte au magnolia) 1941. Oil on canvas, 74 x 101 cm. Centre Pompidou, Paris, MNAM-CCI, purchased 1945 AM 2588 P.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Succession H Matisse/Copyright Agency 2021. Photo: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / Philippe Migeat / Dist RMN-GP</span></span>
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<h2>The influences of Matisse</h2>
<p>Matisse surrounded himself with objects and people that become recurring images within his work. This has enabled the curators to place the blocky bronze Reclining Nude (1907) adjacent to Still Life with Ivy (1916), a painting that includes the Reclining Nude sculpture. </p>
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<span class="caption">Henri Matisse, Odalisque with red culottes (Odalisque à la culotte rouge) 1921. Oil on canvas, 65.3 x 92.3 x 2.5 cm. Centre Pompidou, Paris, MNAM-CCI, purchased by the state, 1922 LUX.0.85 P.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Succession H Matisse/Copyright Agency 2021. Photo: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / Philippe Migeat / Dist RMN-GP</span></span>
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<p>Other works appear to quote, with variations, some of his colleagues. As with other artists of his generation, he was influenced by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_C%C3%A9zanne">Cézanne</a>, famous for his blocky, structured still lifes. Matisse painted Still life with green buffet, where the structure is flattened while the perfectly placed fruit seems to levitate into the ether.</p>
<p>Matisse’s career is a reminder not all artists start young. He was studying law when he suffered from appendicitis. While he was recovering, his mother gave him a paint box and he was seduced by colour. </p>
<p>With Matisse it was always about colour. </p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Henri Matisse, Self-portrait (Autoportrait) 1900. Oil on canvas, 55 x 46 cm. Centre Pompidou, Paris, MNAM-CCI, donation Pierre Matisse, 1991 AM 1991-271.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Succession H Matisse/Copyright Agency 2021. Photo: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / Philippe Migeat/Dist RMN-GP</span></span>
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<p>One of the earlier works in the exhibition is a portrait of the Italian model Bevilaqua. The sheer intensity of the pure cobalt blue of the shadows around his face show the power of colour that would first bring Matisse to critical attention with the Fauve exhibition in 1905. Then there is the brilliance of The Red Carpets, with contrasting patterns of a flamboyant, intense red. </p>
<p>It may be the impact of the dogmatic Cubists, or perhaps the trauma of World War I muted his tone for some time – Minimalists could learn from the rich black in French Window at Collioure. But colour and sensuous line soon reasserted themselves as his dominant mode.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433014/original/file-20211121-21-ss333x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433014/original/file-20211121-21-ss333x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433014/original/file-20211121-21-ss333x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=689&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433014/original/file-20211121-21-ss333x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=689&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433014/original/file-20211121-21-ss333x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=689&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433014/original/file-20211121-21-ss333x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=866&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433014/original/file-20211121-21-ss333x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=866&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433014/original/file-20211121-21-ss333x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=866&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Henri Matisse, Face on yellow ground (Visage sur fond jaune) 1952. Gouache and ink on paper, 75.3 x 64.6 cm. Centre Pompidou, Paris, MNAM-CCI, donation Pierre Matisse, 1991, at Musée de Grenoble since 1993 AM 1991-281.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Succession H Matisse/Copyright Agency 2021. Photo: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / Philippe Migeat / Dist RMN-GP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The beauty of this exhibition is the way it unfolds the development of the artist’s life, underpinned by his exquisite drawings, which act as background music. As well as the art, it is enlivened by rare archival film footage – including one delightful sequence where he shows he has no power over his dog.</p>
<p><em>Matisse: Life & Spirit Masterpieces from the Centre Pompidou, Paris is at the Art Gallery of NSW until March 13 2022</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171817/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna Mendelssohn has received funding from The Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>
Matisse: Life & Spirit is a celebration of the creativity of the master of colour.
Joanna Mendelssohn, Principal Fellow (Hon), Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/149725
2020-11-17T18:50:10Z
2020-11-17T18:50:10Z
Unpacking the magic of Miffy, a simply drawn, bunny-shaped friend
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369513/original/file-20201116-21-r0wnz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C9%2C2029%2C1422&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dick Bruna, Miffy at the gallery 1990. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy and © Mercis bv Amsterdam</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>She couldn’t get much simpler in visual terms. A white bunny cutout, dots for eyes and a little crisscross mouth. But Miffy is an enduringly endearing rabbit. </p>
<p>Called <em>nijntje</em> in the <a href="https://www.miffy.com/the-name-miffy">author’s native Dutch</a>, Miffy was originally created by Dick Bruna for his son. Now <a href="https://www.royaldutchmint.com/65-years-of-miffy-in-coincard/en/product/11603/">65 years on</a>, Miffy remains universally popular. </p>
<p>Miffy books are available in 50 languages and have <a href="https://www.miffy.com/a-global-success">sold millions</a> of copies around the world. A <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1614180/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">stop-motion animated television series</a> brought more world fame and a <a href="https://nijntjemuseum.nl/?lang=en">Miffy museum</a> in Bruna’s native Utrecht was established in 2016.</p>
<p>Bruna, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/17/miffy-creator-dick-bruna-has-died-aged-89">who died in 2017</a>, was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/feb/15/booksforchildrenandteenagers.lisaallardice#:%7E:text=Since%20her%20first%20appearance%20in,whom%20she%20was%20originally%20designed.">reportedly stopped daily near his home for selfies</a> with teenage fans and Miffy merchandise features heavily at popular <a href="https://livejapan.com/en/in-tokyo/in-pref-chiba/in-chiba_suburbs/article-a0003116/">Japanese tulip festivals</a>. </p>
<p>An exhibition, <a href="https://www.artmuseum.qut.edu.au/whats-on/2020/exhibitions/miffy-and-friends">Miffy & Friends</a>, is soon to open at the QUT Art Museum Gallery. As its director Vanessa Van Ooyen <a href="https://visual.artshub.com.au/news-article/sponsored-content/museums/andrea-simpson/how-miffy-inspires-australian-avant-garde-artists-261374">has noted</a>, Bruna’s illustrations have a deceptive simplicity, which belies the artistry behind them. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/childrens-books-must-be-diverse-or-kids-will-grow-up-believing-white-is-superior-140736">Children's books must be diverse, or kids will grow up believing white is superior</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Shades of Mondrian</h2>
<p>It is that very simplicity which, in part, gives Miffy her long-lasting charm. The illustrations are instantly appealing, even for very small children. </p>
<p>Researchers have found that reliably <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5276997/">positive responses to simple curvilinear shapes</a> seem to be present early during development, before language is acquired. Researchers also hold that children associate more positive emotions, like happiness or excitement, with bright colours. Bruna seemed to understand this instinctively from the beginning. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369514/original/file-20201116-19-1ibhuct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Miffy bunny illustration in flowery dress" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369514/original/file-20201116-19-1ibhuct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369514/original/file-20201116-19-1ibhuct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369514/original/file-20201116-19-1ibhuct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369514/original/file-20201116-19-1ibhuct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369514/original/file-20201116-19-1ibhuct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369514/original/file-20201116-19-1ibhuct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369514/original/file-20201116-19-1ibhuct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dick Bruna, Miffy’s birthday 1970.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy and © Mercis bv Amsterdam</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The blocks of colour — Bruna cited countryman <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/kids/explore/who-is/who-piet-mondrian">Piet Mondrian</a> and <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/henri-matisse-1593">Henri Matisse</a> as inspirations — have a universality to them. The settings are not country-specific and, when landscape is depicted, it too can be read as applicable to anywhere and everywhere. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/26/books/move-over-mondrian-its-miffys-turn.html">Bruna wrote</a> for a 2005 illustration exhibition: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I hope that the child’s imagination is stimulated to see things in their simplest form … so that life, with all its complications, becomes a little clearer.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Miffy is <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/basics/anthropomorphism">anthropomorphic</a>, a little white rabbit doing many of the everyday things that lots of children do. She was “born” when the author was on holiday with his family and <a href="https://www.miffy.com/about-miffy">started telling his son stories</a> about a little rabbit in the garden. </p>
<p>In story books, Miffy plays with friends, goes on outings with her parents, helps to paint her room, goes to the zoo and the beach and helps in the garden. There is a wholesomeness and innocent joy in the easily relatable tales.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369508/original/file-20201116-23-18r17sr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A Miffy character postage stamp" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369508/original/file-20201116-23-18r17sr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369508/original/file-20201116-23-18r17sr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369508/original/file-20201116-23-18r17sr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369508/original/file-20201116-23-18r17sr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369508/original/file-20201116-23-18r17sr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369508/original/file-20201116-23-18r17sr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369508/original/file-20201116-23-18r17sr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">You’ve got Miffy mail.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://image.shutterstock.com/image-photo/holland-circa-2005-stamp-printed-260nw-96688879.jpg">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some of the books help make potentially difficult situations or experiences familiar and less frightening, such as when Miffy goes to hospital. Miffy is apprehensive but she is met by a friendly nurse who helps her undress and put on hospital clothes and gives Miffy a pre-operation injection, (which didn’t hurt as much as she had feared). When she wakes from the anaesthetic, Miffy is comforted by the presence of the nurse and then a visit from her parents. </p>
<p>Miffy’s school activities will be familiar to those children who have already started formal education and enticing and intriguing for those getting ready to start. </p>
<p>Friendship features strongly in the books. Miffy’s walk to school with friends is warm and exuberant and they are welcomed by the teacher when they arrive. Soon Miffy is enjoying learning to write, how to add up and — her very favourite — listening to the teacher reading a story.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369516/original/file-20201116-23-170ss72.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Buffy draws simple pictures" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369516/original/file-20201116-23-170ss72.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369516/original/file-20201116-23-170ss72.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369516/original/file-20201116-23-170ss72.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369516/original/file-20201116-23-170ss72.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369516/original/file-20201116-23-170ss72.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369516/original/file-20201116-23-170ss72.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369516/original/file-20201116-23-170ss72.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dick Bruna Miffy at school 1990.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy and © Mercis bv Amsterdam</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/5-reasons-i-always-get-children-picture-books-for-christmas-127801">5 reasons I always get children picture books for Christmas</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Easy reading for small hands</h2>
<p>The size of the majority of the Miffy books (16 centimetres square) makes them easy for small readers and pre-readers to hold. </p>
<p>The language is accessible but does not patronise young readers or “talk down” to them. The rhyme and structure of many of the stories gives them four lines on each page with the second and fourth lines rhyming. </p>
<p>This formula gives a welcome familiarity to the books. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369515/original/file-20201116-13-cff831.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A bunny soft toy in blue and white dress." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369515/original/file-20201116-13-cff831.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369515/original/file-20201116-13-cff831.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369515/original/file-20201116-13-cff831.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369515/original/file-20201116-13-cff831.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369515/original/file-20201116-13-cff831.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369515/original/file-20201116-13-cff831.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369515/original/file-20201116-13-cff831.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cute and cuddly Miffy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Bruna wrote and illustrated more than 100 books, many of them about Miffy. There are Miffy activity books, sticker books, board books, and special titles like <a href="https://www.miffy.com/news/miffy-x-rembrandt">Miffy x Rembrandt</a> which introduces children to the works of two Dutch masters: Rembrandt and Bruna. <a href="https://www.hardiegrant.com/au/publishing/bookfinder/book/miffy_s-123-by-dick-bruna/9781742975092">Miffy’s 123</a> and <a href="https://www.hardiegrant.com/au/publishing/bookfinder/book/miffy_s-abc-by-dick-bruna/9781742975108">Miffy’s ABC</a> books use the character as a stimulus for teaching foundational literacy and numeracy.</p>
<p>In addition to screen adaptations and the continuing popularity of the books themselves, there are many items of merchandise to keep Miffy’s appeal alive. The merchandise encourages book sales and reading and the reverse is true too. Miffy <a href="https://miffyshop.co.uk/collections/books">appears on everything</a> from clocks, cushions, keyrings, clothing and lunchboxes to lamps. </p>
<p>In her native Netherlands, Miffy likenesses are printed on babies’ bibs; there are plush toys in traditional Dutch dress and there is a Miffy room at <a href="https://keukenhof.nl/en/">Keukenhof</a>, the large flower gardens at Lisse. </p>
<p>Miffy is perfectly ubiquitous, her simply drawn face always friendly. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/T7tCfCOtZ70?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Miffy, a sweet little bunny.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="https://www.artmuseum.qut.edu.au/whats-on/2020/exhibitions/miffy-and-friends">miffy & friends</a> is a free exhibition at QUT Art Museum from November 21 until until 14 March 2021. It will then tour to Bunjil Place Gallery in Melbourne from 3 April–13 June 2021.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149725/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Margot Hillel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Simply drawn, universally appealing. A new exhibition provides an opportunity to marvel at Miffy’s global success.
Margot Hillel, Emeritus Professor, Children's Literature, Australian Catholic University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/105604
2018-11-30T13:01:41Z
2018-11-30T13:01:41Z
The ‘Gurlitt case’: how a routine customs check uncovered a sensational Nazi-era art hoard
<p>One of the biggest stories from the Nazi regime’s looting of Jewish-owned art began with a routine customs check on a train from Zurich to Munich in September 2010. When customs agents stopped <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/03/cornelius-gurlitt-nazi-looted-art/554936/">Cornelius Gurlitt</a>, an elderly man resident in Munich, it turned out that he had an unusually large sum in cash on him. The money, which was only just within the legal limit, had apparently derived from an art sale in Bern.</p>
<p>The Bavarian authorities decided to investigate his affairs and in early 2012 carried out an inspection of his Munich apartment. They were astonished to discover it crammed full of art – more than 1,200 pieces. They surmised that he may have been secretly dealing and impounded them subject to investigation. </p>
<p>Because of who he was they also called in an expert to investigate the provenance of these works. His father <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/hitler-hildebrand-gurlitt-cornelius-gurlitt-nazi-art-theft-a8041501.html">Hildebrand Gurlitt</a> had been one of the most important German art dealers to have collaborated with the Nazi regime. Although Gurlitt senior was exonerated of criminal collaboration in 1947, changed attitudes towards these issues today meant that almost any artwork that had passed through his hands was suspect.</p>
<p>When the story eventually broke in November 2013 there was an international media storm. The Bavarian authorities <a href="http://www.taskforce-kunstfund.de/en/about_us.htm">established a task force</a> to examine the provenance of pieces in the find and Cornelius Gurlitt agreed to return works to the heirs of original owners where a case of forced dispossession was established. Soon after this, in April 2014, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/07/arts/design/cornelius-gurlitt-son-of-nazi-era-art-dealer-has-died.html">he died</a>, and it transpired that he had bequeathed the remaining collection to the Bern Kunstmuseum. </p>
<p>This problematic gift generated two coordinated exhibitions in the winter of 2017. The federal art and exhibition hall in Bonn, the <a href="https://www.bundeskunsthalle.de/en/home.html">Bundeskunsthalle</a>, showed works whose provenance remains under review and in Bern the museum of fine arts, the <a href="https://www.kunstmuseumbern.ch/en/startseite-englisch-121.html">Kunstmuseum</a>, displayed pieces that had been cleared of suspicion. The “<a href="https://www.museumsportal-berlin.de/en/exhibitions/bestandsaufnahme-gurlitt/">Gurlitt: Status Report</a>” show in Berlin this year was a combination of the two.</p>
<h2>Degenerate art</h2>
<p>The Gurlitt hoard included some that had been discovered in 2014 in another of his <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/nazi-art-collector-cornelius-gurlitt-found-to-have-more-works-at-his-austria-home-9122246.html">properties in Salzburg</a>. Almost half were either from the Gurlitt family collection or derived from the Nazi “<a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/exhibits-confront-degenerate-art-80-years-later-180964359/">Entartete Kunst</a>” or Degenerate Art campaign of 1937-1940. These were works “purged” from public collections that the regime had allowed Gurlitt senior and three selected colleagues to acquire and sell abroad. By law, Cornelius Gurlitt had clear title to the stocks from this source that his father had retained. </p>
<p>But there were undoubtedly pieces in the hoard that had been expropriated from Jewish owners in Germany and France. The initial investigation by the task force established five proven cases – including a Matisse from the stock of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/14/jewish-art-dealers-family-recover-matisse-painting-looted-by-nazis">Parisian dealer Paul Rosenberg</a> which he had put in storage in 1940 when fleeing France for the USA. Another painting was a Pissarro that had belonged to <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/germany-restitutes-4th-work-from-gurlitt-art-trove/">Max Heilbronn</a>, from the family that owned the Galeries Lafayette in Paris (which had been “aryanised” – handed over to non-Jewish ownership). </p>
<p>There was also a Liebermann painting that had been extorted from the collector <a href="https://www.jewishgen.org/AustriaCzech/wall-of-fame/friedmann.html">David Friedmann</a> in Breslau (Friedmann died in 1942 and his daughter was deported to Auschwitz). The painting was <a href="http://www.sothebys.com/content/sothebys/en/news-video/auction-essays/impressionist-modern-art-evening-sale-l15006/2015/06/property-restituted-.html">restituted to his great nephew</a> in May 2015 and fetched a sensational price at auction shortly afterwards. </p>
<p>But it quickly became evident that the provenance of many of the works was unclear – and, despite intensive research – this remains true today.</p>
<h2>Just and fair solution</h2>
<p>As the current exhibition and the documentation around it demonstrate, the German authorities have devoted enormous resources to the Gurlitt find. This is indicative of the transformation in attitudes and policies towards the restitution of Nazi-looted art over the past 30 years in Germany. In 1998 a <a href="https://www.lootedartcommission.com/Washington-principles">conference was held in Washington</a> devoted to this subject which laid down 11 key principles. These included the encouragement of restitution claims, the opening of relevant archives, the establishment of a central registry of information and the development of national processes for the handling of claims.</p>
<p>The Gurlitt case brings out key features of this difficult topic. First and foremost is the fundamental role of provenance research in determining restitution claims. The digitisation of records and the advent of the internet has transformed the field, but it remains a complex and arduous activity, dependent on both resources and determination. </p>
<p>Looted art also raises complex legal issues. The <a href="https://www.state.gov/p/eur/rt/hlcst/270431.htm">Washington Principles</a> called for a “just and fair” solution to restitution claims, prioritising moral over legal grounds. But these only applied to public bodies – private owners are not bound by them. Cornelius Gurlitt waived his individual rights to those works that the Kunstfund discovered had been looted - a very limited number – but the case drew attention to the difficulties attached to restitution claims caused notably by the statute of limitations concerning ownership under German law.</p>
<p>It also cast a renewed spotlight on the history of the German art world during the Nazi era and its legacy in the postwar years. Gurlitt senior, who was himself a quarter Jewish, had taken up art dealing under pressure of circumstances in order to earn a living in the new political climate. His move towards ever closer collaboration with the Nazi regime was motivated by a combination of ambition, greed and self-protection. </p>
<p>The extent to which he was directly involved in art “looting” is not entirely clear. When interrogated by the American authorities in 1945 he was adamant that he had only purchased work offered him voluntarily and that he had nothing to do with the Nazi agents engaged in the <a href="https://www.lootedart.com/QDES4V964951">expropriation of Jewish collections</a>.</p>
<p>But two things are evident – he and colleagues in France, Holland and Germany – exploited a situation in which the art market was extremely buoyant through a combination of forced sales, lack of other commodities and enormous demand on the part of both public bodies and individuals in the Third Reich. And when the heady era of German domination turned into catastrophe, they set out to preserve as much as possible of their art stocks, and to cover their tracks. </p>
<p>Gurlitt was able to rebuild his career after the war as director of the Düsseldorf Kunstverein. The Gurlitts occasionally lent works to exhibitions – Indeed at the end of his life Hildebrand was the main source of items for a touring exhibition of Modern German works of art on paper for which he <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/hildebrand-gurlitt-1950s-essay-about-his-history-with-art-a-934072.html">wrote an account</a> of his collection and artistic philosophy - which remained unpublished.</p>
<p>But the size and range of their collection was not publicly known – even if some art market insiders were aware of it. Over the years, Gurlitt junior relied on complicit discretion and lack of transparency in the art world in order to surreptitiously sell paintings. </p>
<p>This was dramatically exposed in the aftermath of the incident on the Zurich-Munich train. The Gurlitt Case abruptly confronted the present and the past: it gave a dramatic impetus to the efforts of the German cultural establishment to engage with the phenomenon of Nazi-looted art and contributed to international awareness of the complex issues raised by the Washington Conference 20 years ago, that <a href="https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/restitution-of-nazi-looted-art-a-work-in-progress">remain highly pertinent</a> today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105604/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Malcolm Gee does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The discovery of an apartment crammed with art has revealed the dark history of collaboration and looting during the days of the Third Reich.
Malcolm Gee, Visiting Fellow in Art History, Northumbria University, Newcastle
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104921
2018-10-15T19:02:39Z
2018-10-15T19:02:39Z
Modern Art from The Hermitage showcases the French gems of two great merchant collectors
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240541/original/file-20181015-109236-1kj1uj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Paul Signac, 'Leaving the Port of Marseille' 1906/7 oil on canvas, 46 x 55.2 cm, The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Inv GE 6524.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: © The State Hermitage Museum 2018, Vladimir Terebenin.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The first corner of the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ summer blockbuster <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/hermitage/">Masters of Modern Art from the Hermitage</a> is dominated by three giant black and white archival photographs, but visitors’ eyes are drawn to the intense colours of a single painting, Christian Cornelius Krohn’s 1915 portrait of the collector, Sergey Shchukin. </p>
<p>Unlike many of the great works in the Hermitage, which are very much a tribute to the collecting passion of <a href="https://theconversation.com/masterpieces-from-the-hermitage-puts-the-great-in-catherine-the-great-review-45435">Catherine the Great</a>,
most of the early 20th century paintings are a result of the collecting passion of two families – the Shchukins and the Morozovs.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240553/original/file-20181015-165891-1nzcqi0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240553/original/file-20181015-165891-1nzcqi0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240553/original/file-20181015-165891-1nzcqi0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=700&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240553/original/file-20181015-165891-1nzcqi0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=700&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240553/original/file-20181015-165891-1nzcqi0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=700&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240553/original/file-20181015-165891-1nzcqi0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=880&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240553/original/file-20181015-165891-1nzcqi0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=880&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240553/original/file-20181015-165891-1nzcqi0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=880&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Christian Cornelius Krohn (Xan Krohn) ‘Portrait of Sergey Shchukin 1915, The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg Inv GE 9090.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Estate of Christian Krohn/BONO.Copyright Agency, 2018</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Last year, much of Sergey Shchukin’s remarkable collection of early works by Picasso, Matisse and their circle, was shown in Paris. According to <a href="http://www.artnews.com/2017/02/21/an-embarrassment-of-riches-the-shchukin-collection-at-fondation-louis-vuitton-in-paris-overflows-with-modernist-masterpieces-and-offers-dark-parallels-to-our-plutocratic-present/">The Art Newspaper</a>, French audiences packed the galleries as these were “some of the best paintings their culture has produced”. In Sydney, works from Shchukin’s collection mingle with paintings from the collection of the Morozovs, as well as other paintings “liberated” from their wealthy owners after the 1917 Revolution. </p>
<p>One of the photographs shows Shchukin’s Picasso room, where the walls are crowded with finely painted melancholy studies from the artist’s Blue Period, a few very early Cubist works – and two readily identifiable paintings from this exhibition. </p>
<p>Woman With a Fan and Farm Woman were both painted in 1908, when the artist was on the cusp of turning from Cézanne-inspired solid forms to Cubism. Woman With a Fan was loosely based on a study of his mistress, Fernande Olivier, while Farm Woman was based on Marie-Louise Putman, the owner of a house where Picasso was staying. Yet both have been rendered anonymous, reduced to pure geometry.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240537/original/file-20181015-109213-d3w94r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240537/original/file-20181015-109213-d3w94r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240537/original/file-20181015-109213-d3w94r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240537/original/file-20181015-109213-d3w94r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240537/original/file-20181015-109213-d3w94r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240537/original/file-20181015-109213-d3w94r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240537/original/file-20181015-109213-d3w94r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240537/original/file-20181015-109213-d3w94r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pablo Picasso, ‘Table in a café (Bottle of Pernod)’ 1912 oil on canvas, 46 x 33 cm, The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Inv GE 8920.
© Pablo Picasso/Succession Pablo Picasso/Copyright Agency 2018</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: © The State Hermitage Museum 2018, Vladimir Terebenin, Leonard Kheifets and Yuri Mololkovets</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When the Shchukins and the Morozovs travelled to Paris for trade and pleasure they were following a path well trod by generations of Russians. Since the time of Peter the Great, Russia had turned to France for both intellectual and aesthetic nourishment. In music and dance this had long ceased to be one way traffic as Tchaikovsky melded elements from both Western and Russian traditions, while Russian Ballet took a French tradition and made it its own.</p>
<p>It is curious, but not surprising that the two great collectors of modern art were textile merchants. Their trade gave them an eye for fresh relationships between colour, line and texture. </p>
<p>By the end of the 19th century the Morozovs were one of the richest families in Russia. Ivan and Mikhail Morozov were passionate collectors of Bonnard, Sisley, Signac, Pissarro and Cézanne. The family was sympathetic to the aims of the Bolshevik Revolution (their grandfather had been a serf) and Ivan planned to eventually give his collection to the state.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240539/original/file-20181015-109222-2c3emw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240539/original/file-20181015-109222-2c3emw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240539/original/file-20181015-109222-2c3emw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240539/original/file-20181015-109222-2c3emw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240539/original/file-20181015-109222-2c3emw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240539/original/file-20181015-109222-2c3emw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240539/original/file-20181015-109222-2c3emw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240539/original/file-20181015-109222-2c3emw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paul Cézanne, ‘Fruit’ 1879/80, oil on canvas, 46.2 x 55.3 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.
Inv GE 9026</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: © The State Hermitage Museum 2018, Pavel Demidov and Konstantin Sinyavsky</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the state took it first. In 1923 his house and collection had become the State Museum of Modern Western Art, which eventually became the repository for looted art from other collections. By 1932, Stalin’s doctrinaire hegemony decreed that modern Western art was decadent and it vanished from public view until after his death. The preservation of Russia’s great collections in the face of totalitarian opposition is a tribute to the bravery of generations of dedicated museum professional staff.</p>
<h2>Befriending Matisse</h2>
<p>Sergey Shchukin, who first visited Paris in the 1890s, was a very early patron of that young radical, Henri Matisse. The earliest Matisse in this exhibition, The Luxembourg Gardens, circa 1901, takes a subject which is almost a cliché of French Impressionism, and makes it into a Fauve celebration of pure, intense colour. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240554/original/file-20181015-165924-lkpnas.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240554/original/file-20181015-165924-lkpnas.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240554/original/file-20181015-165924-lkpnas.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240554/original/file-20181015-165924-lkpnas.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240554/original/file-20181015-165924-lkpnas.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240554/original/file-20181015-165924-lkpnas.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240554/original/file-20181015-165924-lkpnas.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240554/original/file-20181015-165924-lkpnas.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Henri Matisse ‘The Luxembourg Gardens’ c1901, The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg Inv GE 9041.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Succession H Matisse/Copyright Agency, 2018</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is a truly remarkable painting. Shchukin bought it from Matisse’s dealer, Galerie Druet, in 1907. A year later he bought the luminous Woman on a Terrace of 1906, a work of such stunning simplicity that it is worth seeing the exhibition for this alone. But Shchukin did not stop with collecting Matisse’s early masterpieces and befriending the artist. In 1911 Matisse visited Russia, as Shchukin’s guest.</p>
<p>The portrait of Shchukin hangs next to an entrancing, but frustrating, photograph of the Pink Drawing Room in his mansion. The elaborate 18th century Roccoco room is covered in a crowd of masterpieces by Matisse - but the photograph is in black and white, with no sense of colour. From historic records we know that in order to prepare the room for his art, the artist arranged for the ceiling to be painted pink. The walls were given pale green wallpaper, the carpet was cherry red. Matisse then curated his personal selection of some of the paintings Shchukin had bought, including A Game of Bowls of 1908.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240538/original/file-20181015-109242-13ekbtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240538/original/file-20181015-109242-13ekbtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240538/original/file-20181015-109242-13ekbtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240538/original/file-20181015-109242-13ekbtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240538/original/file-20181015-109242-13ekbtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240538/original/file-20181015-109242-13ekbtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240538/original/file-20181015-109242-13ekbtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240538/original/file-20181015-109242-13ekbtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Henri Matisse ‘Game of bowls’ 1908, oil on canvas, 115 x 147 cm, The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Inv GE 9154.
© Succession H Matisse/Copyright Agency, 2018</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: © The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg 2018, Vladimir Terebenin</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I can understand why this work, along with Nymph and Satyr, painted the following year, hangs at the entrance to the central court in the Sydney exhibition. Their fluidity of form and line, along with their limited palette, connect them to Matisse’s two great Dance and Music paintings.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240540/original/file-20181015-109236-1xpyw2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240540/original/file-20181015-109236-1xpyw2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240540/original/file-20181015-109236-1xpyw2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240540/original/file-20181015-109236-1xpyw2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240540/original/file-20181015-109236-1xpyw2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240540/original/file-20181015-109236-1xpyw2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240540/original/file-20181015-109236-1xpyw2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240540/original/file-20181015-109236-1xpyw2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paul Gauguin,‘The month of Mary (Te avae no Maria)’ 1899, oil on canvas, 96 x 74.5 cm, The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Inv GE 6515.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: © The State Hermitage Museum 2018, Vladimir Terebenin, Leonard Kheifets and Yuri Mololkovets</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The opportunity to see this art up close and personal, to get a sense of how Matisse interacted with the culture of the man who so admired him, is rare indeed. </p>
<p>The Dance and Music paintings are not in the Sydney show. However, visitors can see Peter Greenaway and Saskia Boddeke’s five channel, multi-media installation that recreates the relationship between Shchukin, Matisse, radical Russian artists and two of the great paintings of the 20th century.</p>
<p>Shchukin was passionate about sharing the art he had bought. In 1907 he opened his house to visitors every Sunday. When the Bolshevik Revolution overturned the old order in 1917, he fled to France and his art was seized on the orders of Lenin.</p>
<p>The last work in the exhibition, Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square, owes nothing and everything to the activities of the merchant collectors of modern art. In its stark denial of any resemblance to reality, it eliminates any consideration of possible decoration and challenges the very idea of what art may be. </p>
<p>The first version of Black Square was exhibited in St Petersburg in 1915 in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0,10_Exhibition">The Last Exhibition of Futurist Painting 0.10</a>. It therefore overlaps between the era of the merchant collectors and the creation of a new world.</p>
<p>If there had been no Revolution, no state confiscation of this great collection, would it have remained intact, or would it have been fragmented by the relentless art market? </p>
<p>The actions of the first Bolshevik revolutionaries, followed by the ethical scholarship and fortitude of generations of curators, enable us today to have a small window into the minds of these great experimental collectors and the art that they loved.</p>
<p><em>Masters of Modern Art from the Hermitage is at the Art Gallery of New South Wales until March 3.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104921/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna Mendelssohn has received funding from the Australian Research Council for a Linkage Project grant in partnership with the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of South Australia and Museums Australia. This grant enabled the research for Australian Art Exhibitions: Opening Our Eyes, written in partnership with Catherine De Lorenzo, Alison Inglis and Catherine Speck. The publication of this book by Thames and Hudson Australia was enabled by a grant from the Gordon Darling Foundation.</span></em></p>
In the early 20th century, two families of collectors brought the best of modern French art to Russia. Many of their paintings - including works by Picasso, Matisse and Cezanne - can now be seen in Sydney.
Joanna Mendelssohn, Honorary Associate Professor, Art & Design: UNSW Australia. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, UNSW Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/68324
2016-11-07T00:22:29Z
2016-11-07T00:22:29Z
Review: The naked nude from the Tate
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144743/original/image-20161106-27947-1tgrxwo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Louise Bourgeois's
Arched figure 1993: powerful and unforgettable.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Art Gallery of New South Wales Foundation Purchase 2016 © The Easton Foundation.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>One senses that summer is around the corner when Australia’s major public art galleries unveil their summer blockbuster exhibitions – Versailles at the National Gallery in Canberra, David Hockney at the National Gallery of Victoria and Nude from the Tate at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. They all promise to be big, glitzy designer exhibitions and with a huge popular appeal.</p>
<p>Sydney’s Nude is the first cab off the rank. It seems to tick all the right boxes: nudity sounds sexy and spicy, while the Tate is high in the cultural capital stakes. </p>
<p>It is not a tightly curated exhibition that argues a thesis, but more of a popular summer show built around the themes of the nude, naked and undressed with all their many connotations within cultural history. It is also a show that sparkles with a number of famous names, including Picasso, Matisse, Turner and Rodin.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144746/original/image-20161106-27911-i317zz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144746/original/image-20161106-27911-i317zz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144746/original/image-20161106-27911-i317zz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144746/original/image-20161106-27911-i317zz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144746/original/image-20161106-27911-i317zz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144746/original/image-20161106-27911-i317zz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144746/original/image-20161106-27911-i317zz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144746/original/image-20161106-27911-i317zz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Henri Matisse.
Draped nude, 1936</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Succession H Matisse. image © Tate, London 2016</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The exhibition has been co-curated and co-created between London (by Emma Chambers curator of modern British art at the Tate) and Sydney (by Justin Paton head of international art at the AGNSW). Although most of it is drawn from the holdings of the Tate, there is a sprinkling of pieces from the Sydney gallery and the Lewis Collection.</p>
<p>The hero image for the show is the bulky marble The Kiss made by Rigaud, who worked in Auguste Rodin’s atelier, and carved the marble block based on the original carved by Rodin himself for the Musée du Luxembourg. The master may have had a hand in finishing this copy. The literary source was Dante’s Inferno, where the adulterous lovers Paolo Malatesta and Francesca da Rimini, while reading the Arthurian legend of Lancelot, got carried away when they reached the spot of Lancelot’s first embrace of Queen Guinevere.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144750/original/image-20161106-27939-15r17bx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144750/original/image-20161106-27939-15r17bx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144750/original/image-20161106-27939-15r17bx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144750/original/image-20161106-27939-15r17bx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144750/original/image-20161106-27939-15r17bx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144750/original/image-20161106-27939-15r17bx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144750/original/image-20161106-27939-15r17bx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144750/original/image-20161106-27939-15r17bx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Auguste Rodin The kiss, 1901–04: made by Rigaud, it has grown a little tired through over exposure.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Tate, London 2016</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Francesca’s husband, not being the literary kind, simply killed them in an act of domestic violence. The observant viewer who is able to remove his or her gaze long enough from the amorous couple, will notice the book in Paolo’s left hand. A little like Rodin’s Thinker, The Kiss is a grand image of erotic love that has grown a little tired through over exposure and it is difficult to imagine the excitement and controversy that the work caused when it was first acquired by the Tate in 1953.</p>
<p>For me, a much more powerful and timely piece of sculpture is Louise Bourgeois’s bronze Arched figure (1993). This is a new acquisition by the AGNSW, with this copy cast in 2010, the year of the artist’s death. The figure in an arched form was one of the obsessive images in Bourgeois’s oeuvre and grew out her interest in physical, emotional and psychological dimensions of fear and pain. </p>
<p>The arch of hysteria, as she termed it, is a clinical state where the muscles contract and the body is cast into a form of paralysis brought on by an extreme emotional state. The mattress suggests a domestic situation, while the substitution of the female model with a male nude subverts the assumption that hysteria is a female condition. This sculpture and her accompanying blood red drawings are powerful and unforgettable.</p>
<p>One of the other great highlights in the exhibition is the all-time showstopper in painting, Stanley Spencer’s Double nude portrait: the artist and his second wife (1937). It is a painting that you never forget and I remember being mesmerised by it on first encounter in the mid 70s in London. It is just such a virtuoso piece of painting and of psychological observation. It is painfully explicit, clinically observed eroticism, but contains wit and a hint of pathos.</p>
<p>Many would know that Spencer’s second marriage was never consummated and the situation is summed up with the uncooked leg of mutton, otherwise inexplicably presented in the foreground. It is a remarkable treatment of the human flesh by one of the quirkiest and most significant artists that Britain ever produced.</p>
<p>At the opposite emotional end of the spectrum is the wall of Pierre Bonnards, one of the supreme masters of painting the female flesh and one of the most influential artists for the development of the course of modern Australian art. The knockout piece is Bonnard’s The bath (1925). </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144745/original/image-20161106-27934-sbeo8t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144745/original/image-20161106-27934-sbeo8t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144745/original/image-20161106-27934-sbeo8t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144745/original/image-20161106-27934-sbeo8t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144745/original/image-20161106-27934-sbeo8t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144745/original/image-20161106-27934-sbeo8t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144745/original/image-20161106-27934-sbeo8t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144745/original/image-20161106-27934-sbeo8t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pierre Bonnard The bath, 1925: a tragic, loving painting.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tate: Presented by Lord Ivor Spencer Churchill through the Contemporary Art Society 1930 © Estate of Pierre Bonnard. image © Tate, London 2016</span></span>
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<p>There are a number of approaches to the viewing of this painting, like the brutal geometry in truncating the bath and the body, the play with light and water and the strange colour and light on the flesh. The historical circumstances are somewhat depressing, as it is a painting of the artist’s muse and by that time wife, Marthe, who at that stage was in her fifties and was suffering from tuberculosis, where a popular treatment in those days was many hours of water therapy. It is this tragic, loving painting on a considerable scale that celebrates beauty and redemption.</p>
<p>The exhibition thematically meanders through the historical nude, the private nude, the modern nude, real and surreal bodies, paint as flesh, the erotic nude, body politics and the vulnerable nude, but for all of its trumpeting of risk and daring, it remains essentially a rather puritanical summer exercise without someone like Robert Mapplethorpe rocking the boat. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144747/original/image-20161106-27939-nyxjvp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144747/original/image-20161106-27939-nyxjvp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144747/original/image-20161106-27939-nyxjvp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144747/original/image-20161106-27939-nyxjvp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144747/original/image-20161106-27939-nyxjvp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144747/original/image-20161106-27939-nyxjvp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144747/original/image-20161106-27939-nyxjvp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Picasso’s Nude woman in a red armchair, 1932.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Succession Picasso image © Tate, London 2016</span></span>
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<p>There are at least a dozen memorable pieces, including the Hockney homoerotic etchings (1966), Sickert’s Seated nude: the black hat (c.1900), Picasso’s Nude in a red armchair (1932), Matisse’s Draped nude (1932) and de Chirico’s The uncertainty of the poet (1913), but there are many predictable Christmas stocking fillers. Also, there are the selfie magnets, such as Ron Mueck’s Wild man (2005).</p>
<p>This show may not set the Sydney Harbour on fire, but it is an enjoyable summer excursion with more than simply eye candy as the reward.</p>
<p><em>Nude: Art from the Tate Collection is at the Art Gallery of New South Wales until the 5 February 2017</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68324/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sasha Grishin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Art Gallery of NSW’s summer blockbuster sparkles with famous names, including Picasso, Matisse, Turner and Rodin. But for all of its trumpeting of risk and daring, it remains essentially a rather puritanical exercise.
Sasha Grishin, Adjunct Professor of Art History, Australian National University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/32931
2014-10-31T09:38:59Z
2014-10-31T09:38:59Z
From the Tate to the MoMA: cross-continental perspectives of Matisse’s cut-outs
<p><em>On October 12, New York City’s Museum of Modern Art unveiled its <a href="http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2014/matisse/">exhibition</a> of Henri Matisse’s cut-outs. This came on the heels an exhibition of the cut-outs at the Tate Modern in London, which displayed the works from April to September. Harriet Senie, Director of Art Museum Studies at the City College of New York, and Fran Lloyd, Professor of Art History at London’s Kingston University, compared notes about their respective visits.</em></p>
<p><strong>Harriet Senie</strong>: Framed by the entrance-way to signal its importance, the first work in the MoMA exhibition, Two Dancers, is a study for a ballet stage curtain design.</p>
<p>Surprisingly, the apparently two-dimensional technique of creating the cut-outs creates a subtle spatial effect, because each distinct shape is tacked on separately and is precisely layered. The resulting three-dimensional quality was very important to Matisse. Earlier in his career he would use cut-outs as a device to develop other projects that would exist in actual space. </p>
<p><strong>Fran Lloyd</strong>: By contrast, at the Tate Modern in London, the intimate opening room focused on Matisse’s act of making the cut-outs. Taking his oil painting <a href="http://www.henri-matisse.net/paintings/do.html">Still Life with Shell</a> (1940) as a starting point, the <a href="http://westernindependent.blogspot.com/2014/08/matisse-cut-outs-at-tate-modern.html">adjacent cut-out work of the same title</a> shows Matisse using pasted collage shapes and pieces of string to re-think the painting’s composition. Opposite, the mesmerizing one-minute color film by Adrien Maeght from 1945 captures the dynamic and assured actions of <a href="http://www.artesmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/henri-matisse.jpg">Matisse cutting</a> large painted paper shapes in midair: one hand on the hanging paper, the other wielding the scissors.</p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Henri Matisse, 1933.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_of_Henri_Matisse_1933_May_20.jpg">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Harriet Senie</strong>: It sounds as if the installations were quite different, with process emerging slowly in the MoMA show, while being foregrounded at the Tate. In New York, the installation of the Maeght film (a very important contribution, to be sure) was somewhat problematic, as it provided no seating.
However, since the paper cut-out technique emerged gradually for Matisse, I preferred its location about halfway through the exhibition, where it was embedded at a chronological point in his stylistic evolution. The Materials and Process section of the exhibition revealed that Matisse was not able to cut in a single line at first but gradually developed this facility. </p>
<p>As an installation technique, I appreciated the cases that made it possible to leaf through the artist’s published books. I have seen it used before with medieval manuscripts and always marvel at how much it adds to the experience of the work as a whole.</p>
<p>Similarly, this technique of allowing the visitor to “leaf” through different views was used to great advantage with the Chapel at Vence cut-outs, allowing the visitor to visually experience the cut-outs as they existed in the chapel. </p>
<p><strong>Fran Lloyd</strong>: Jazz was beautifully displayed in a large space with the original 1943-44 maquette cut-outs on paper (loaned from the Centre Pompidou) alongside two copies of the published volume from MoMA and the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh. The Vence Chapel walk-through sounds excellent; this was an element that was missing in London. </p>
<p><strong>Harriet Senie</strong>: Visitors were mesmerized by the five-year conservation effort of restoring the Swimming Pool. This type of technical information conveys the significance of every artistic decision (even accidental ones) – how the slightest shift of any detail alters the appearance and experience, sometimes dramatically. This is especially significant for Matisse’s work, where every color is extremely specific and each cut-out composition appears locked in place, as if it were the only possible solution.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Conserving the Swimming Pool.</span></figcaption>
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<p>I was unaware that Matisse also worked on designs for textiles, carpets and ceramics. It seems worth emphasizing that aside from the <a href="http://www.designishistory.com/1920/the-bauhaus/">Bauhaus</a>, artists did not make distinctions between what came to be seen as “high” and “low” art. It also made me think about <a href="http://www.calder.org">Calder</a> – who worked in both realms – and his relationship to Matisse. Calder was a close friend of Matisse’s grandson, Paul, and was undoubtedly familiar with the older artist’s work. </p>
<p><strong>Fran Lloyd</strong>: I was struck by the way the studio and the home literally became one, especially with the London room installations that showed the two Oceania works of 1946 and the Vence pieces of 1947. The former was created in Matisse’s Montparnasse studio in Paris just after the war, the latter in his apartment and studio in the south of France.</p>
<p><strong>Harriet Senie</strong>: The care Matisse took to create his own environment reminded me of <a href="https://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read-listen/read/articles/monets-gardens-in-giverny">Monet’s garden</a>. Most famously, Matisse created The Swimming Pool to line the walls of the dining room at his apartment in Nice, France. </p>
<p>In terms of broader art historical considerations, the exhibition makes clear when Matisse first had an idea and when he actually realized it. This is evident in the evolution of the <a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/492788">Barnes mural</a>. Realized over the course of 1932 and 1933, it depicts figures based on Matisse’s earlier dance compositions, which date back to the first decade of the century. Making the distinction between the conception of an idea and its execution is significant not only for the history of the artist, but also for the history of art in general, which typically assumes the date of a work to be when it was completed. </p>
<p><strong>Fran Lloyd</strong>: Indeed, this opens up the way that an exhibition, like the Matisse Cut-Outs – particularly as it is re-shaped for different sites – enables a new encounter and fresh ways of seeing and thinking about the works, which includes their context and shifting meanings. Through the cut-outs we can envisage other shows yet to be.</p>
<p><strong>Harriet Senie</strong>: Matisse uses letters as compositional elements, rather than foregrounding their significance as text (although they can certainly be read). It would be interesting to see an exhibition that traced the use of text in a variety of artists’ works from early in the twentieth century to their later iterations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/32931/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
On October 12, New York City’s Museum of Modern Art unveiled its exhibition of Henri Matisse’s cut-outs. This came on the heels an exhibition of the cut-outs at the Tate Modern in London, which displayed…
Harriet F. Senie, Director of Museum Studies, City University of New York
Fran Lloyd, Professor of Art History, Kingston University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/25721
2014-04-22T13:08:26Z
2014-04-22T13:08:26Z
Blockbuster pricing: why is the Matisse exhibition so expensive?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46829/original/3ftdkhn5-1398168055.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">This much space? We should be so lucky. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/su-lin/495067576/">su-lin</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s billed as a five-star, must-see, once-in-a-lifetime experience. And tickets for the exhibition of <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/henri-matisse-cut-outs">Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs</a> at Tate Modern are already selling fast. Advance booking is recommended, and the Tate website warns anyone rash enough to turn up without a ticket that they can expect a lengthy queue for entry. For those who can’t make the journey to London, there is the compensation of the <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/film/cinema-event-matisse-live-tate-modern">film</a> of the exhibition “coming to a cinema near you” on 3 June, now part of the standard marketing of a blockbuster exhibition.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/matisse-cut-outs-stun-with-colour-scale-and-ambition-25459">Critics’ response</a> to the exhibition has been almost unanimously positive. The display been described as sensitive and serious: no small achievement in curating art that is superficially so decorative and apparently so familiar. </p>
<p>However well we thought we knew Matisse’s joyous graphic images from reproductions in print and online, it turns out there is no substitute for seeing the delicate layers and precise colours of the gouaches <em>découpés</em>. That is, if you don’t mind edging your way in front of each artwork and then craning your neck to see from behind the row of heads that inevitably form a barrier between you and the object of the exhibition. </p>
<p>Matisse’s wonderful cut-outs are the latest manifestation of the contemporary exhibition truism: the higher the cost of admission, the poorer the quality of the viewing experience. The top-price tickets for Matisse are £18 for full-price adult admission, including a gift aid donation to Tate, which is the same as the current crowd-puller at the British Museum, <a href="http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/vikings/about.aspx">Vikings: Life and Legend</a>. There is no shortage of visitors for either show, but are they worth it?</p>
<p>Even when admission numbers to an exhibition are deliberately restricted (as in the <a href="http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/leonardo-da-vinci-painter-at-the-court-of-milan">2012 Leonardo exhibition</a> at the National Gallery), visitors are obliged to shuffle between artworks and wait their turn before getting close to any of the pieces. Tate Modern is notorious for not limiting numbers to its big shows: the term “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/jan/16/gauguin-tate-modern-crowds">gallery rage</a>” first gained currency during its unbearably busy <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/gauguin">Gauguin exhibition</a> in 2010. </p>
<p><a href="http://grumpyarthistorian.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/exhibitions-in-london.html">One blogger</a> has already commented that, unless you are on the guest list for one of the growing number of exhibition previews, the Matisse show has, in effect, already ended, because seeing the works will be practically impossible during “ordinary” opening hours.</p>
<p>So, what exactly are we paying £18 for? The (remote) possibility of seeing the artworks up close and personal is only part of the picture, of course. For the past 200 years, exhibition visiting has been as much a social as a cultural experience: spectatorship is about seeing, but also about being seen and being able to talk about it afterwards. Museums like Tate understand this well. Exhibitions turn art into an event.</p>
<p>These are not only opportunities for art historical research, comparison and interpretation, they are media-primed, commercial productions. This is crucial to boosting visitor figures and maintaining the museum’s brand profile. The economics are complex: exhibitions are costly (transport, insurance, design, promotion etc.), but they can also be lucrative (sponsorship, admissions, merchandise). The ticket price is as much a cipher of the marketability and prestige of an exhibition as it is a calculation of box office income needed to defray the costs of production. </p>
<p>Would an £18 exhibition ticket seem as pricey in, say, New York, where adult admission to the Museum of Modern Art and the “recommended” admission for the Metropolitan Museum of Art is already $25? Perhaps not, and there’s the rub for national museums in the UK. </p>
<p>The introduction of free admission to national museums in 2001 reinforced the principle that these great public collections somehow belong to each of us, morally if not legally. Both the public funding and the authority of an institution such as Tate are predicated on this idea. And if we believe in free access to art, we may well baulk at forking out £18 for an exhibition, despite knowing very well that this is cheap compared with the cost of a theatre or sports ticket, or even a round of drinks. Not to mention the fact that, when we are on holiday, we are willing to stump up the entry charges to local museums. </p>
<p>And there is that little matter of the “gift aid donation” included in the £18 ticket. The full-price adult ticket is really £16.30, and there is the opportunity to pay this, but it is well down the list of prices. The additional £1.70 is pitched as a charitable donation which, under UK gift aid legislation, enables the Tate to reclaim the tax already paid on the value of the £18 ticket. </p>
<p>It’s a neat fundraising idea, but it may be a surprise to learn that Tate can benefit from the top-up on your exhibition ticket because it is a charity, as well as a state-sponsored, non-departmental public body. It may be less surprising to discover that visiting the Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs feels like shopping on the first day of the January sales. Paying £18 to contemplate Matisse’s cut-outs without the crowds would be the bargain of the year, but that isn’t what’s on offer this spring at Tate Modern. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/25721/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Rees Leahy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
It’s billed as a five-star, must-see, once-in-a-lifetime experience. And tickets for the exhibition of Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs at Tate Modern are already selling fast. Advance booking is recommended…
Helen Rees Leahy, Director of the Centre for Museology, University of Manchester
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.