Saturday 5 September 2015

A touch of Nice and Antibes , Matisse and Picasso



We Visited and swam at Nice, Verdon Gorge ,  Moustiers St Marie  ; Chapel du Rosaire at Vence  by Henri Matisse at his age of 77, the greatest project of his life. He  had not practiced the religion for many years, but designed the chapel as an artistic challenge. 
In this trip to France, I have eventually got a touch to the French Arts from Matisse and Picasso. 
 Matisse tried  to let his works  "not to take precedence over feelings".   He once said  " you must subject yourself to the influence of nature. You must be able to walk firmly on the ground before you start walking on a tightrope."
Bill 

 Matisse said  "drawing not as an exercise of particular dexterity…  which should speak without clumsiness, directly to the mind of the spectator." Pablo Picasso , a Spanish painter,   expressed anger and condemnation of Francisco Franco and fascists. He said "Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist."
Henri Matisse ( 1869-1954 ) Initially trained as a lawyer, Matisse developed an interest in art only at age twenty-one. Matisse's underlying aim always remained the same: to discover "the essential character of things" and to produce an art "of balance, purity, and serenity," as he himself put it in his "Notes of a Painter" in 1908. 
Matisse explored and experimented throughout his lifetime with his  drawings.  Drawing in elegant, unshaded line, describing simplified forms of female figures or still lifes, often helped Matisse to work out compositional and stylistic problems or new ideas. . In the late 1940s and early '50s, his drawings become bolder, the contour line thicker, the forms even more simplified and devoid of detail; as in Blue Nudes (2002.456.58). Matisse commented to draw nature ,not personal feelings 
Henri Matisse is widely regarded as the greatest colorist of the twentieth century and as a rival to Pablo Picasso in the importance of his innovations. He emerged as a Post-Impressionist,  the leader of the French movement Fauvism.  he sought to create an art that would be "a soothing, calming influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair." 
Matisse once wanted his art to be one "of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter,"  who looked to art to provide shelter from the disorientation of the modern world. "I have always considered drawing not as an exercise of particular dexterity… but as a means deliberately simplified so as to give simplicity and spontaneity to the expression, which should speak without clumsiness, directly to the mind of the spectator."

"Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence."
"If I trust my drawing hand it is because in training it to serve me, I forced myself never to let it take precedence over my feelings."  Still life and the nude remained favorite subjects throughout his career; North Africa was also an important inspiration, 

Quotes by Henri Matisse
There are always flowers for those who want to see them.
I have been no more than a medium, as it were.
You study, you learn, but you guard the original naivete. It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard or love is within the lover.
Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence.
Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul.
In the beginning you must subject yourself to the influence of nature. You must be able to walk firmly on the ground before you start walking on a tightrope.
Matisse built the church ,  built in 1947 when he was 77. Cannot see through yellow (God), can see the blue and green. 
Movie - model for Matisse 2005   

Between Picasso and Matisse,  Matisse apparently said  that he was very much a man of northern France, Picasso was very much a man of southern Spain. .And both knew each other very well.  Matisse and Picasso may have been very important to each other, they  looked at each other's works very  carefully .

Pablo Picasso ( 1881- 1973 ) was a Spanish painter,  As a Spanish citizen living in France, Picasso was under no compulsion to fight against the invading Germans in either World War. In the Spanish Civil War, service for Spaniards living abroad was optional and would have involved a voluntary return to their country to join either side. While Picasso expressed anger and condemnation of Francisco Franco and fascists through his art, he did not take up arms against them.

In 1944 Picasso joined the French Communist Party,  But party criticism of a portrait of Stalin as insufficiently realistic cooled Picasso's interest in Soviet politics, In a 1945 interview with Jerome Seckler, Picasso stated: "But if I were a shoemaker, ...... I would not necessarily hammer my shoes in a special way to show my my politics."[56]
Picasso was exceptionally prolific throughout his long lifetime. The total number of artworks he produced has been estimated at 50,000.
Picasso painted mostly from imagination or memory. According to William Rubin, Picasso "could only make great art from subjects that truly involved him ... Unlike Matisse, Picasso had eschewed models virtually all his mature life, preferring to paint individuals whose lives had both impinged on, and had real significance for, his own."[74] 
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.

Pablo Picasso Quotes. 

in 1946 he settled in Antibes. The Picasso museum in Antibes was castle of 1385 to 1607. Officially dedicated to Picasso in1947, who painted 2 months there.  

No comments: