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Red fish and sculpture
Henri Matisse • Painting, 1911, 100.5×116.2 cm
Description of the artwork «Red fish and sculpture»
Red fish and sculpture, fish in the interior, or just an aquarium with red fish - Matisse repeatedly meets the plot. In particular, this picture has a predecessor - "Red fish", stored in the Moscow State Museum named after Pushkin - in this case we are not talking about a direct quote, the pictures are connected only by the character, that is, the fish themselves. But in the following year "Red fishes in the interior" the canvas with the sculpture was used directly, but the space around the aquarium was expanded.
"Red fish and sculptureWere created during the Matisse experiment with Cubism. The picture is certainly fauvistic, but "here was Cubism", in any case, as if passing nearby. The elongated silhouettes of the fish are maximally flattened and generalized, the flowers in the vase are created by circular spots. At the same time the picture is written in a unique Matisse color scale, a dense blue background (blue artist favored - sometime in his youth, with all his savings, he bought a blue butterfly and selflessly painted it), bright red fish and red spots of flowers (“Fauvism is when there is red!”, Matisse once said). Used by the beloved Matisse open window motif. Sculpture in the form of a naked woman is depicted by a hot pink color, its forms are pointedly geometrized.
Matisse's connection with Cubism and its leader Pablo Picasso - the topic is interesting. Matisse and Picasso had a relationship that cannot be defined in one word, a kind of friendship-enmity-rivalry-recognition. Matisse was a witness at the wedding of Picasso with ballerina Olga Khokhlova. The great Cubist described the difference between the two to the great Fauvist: "I have mastered the drawing and looking for a color, you have mastered the color and are looking for a drawing". And Matisse believed that they are with Picasso - like the North and South Pole. Their paths were completely different, but both influenced one another, and all further world painting.
But, perhaps, the most profound difference between them is not on the color-form scale. Matisse never thought about abandoning nature, from figurativeness. With realism - yes, he said goodbye early. But to dispense with the connection of the image with reality - he did not even think about that, abstraction was utterly alien to him. The famous saying Matisse: "If I had met such a woman (from my paintings - ed.) In my life, I would have run away from her in horror", does not contradict this at all. The woman portrayed by Matisse remains a woman, and the fish are precisely the fish, even if we have scarlet flaws in front of us, as in this picture. Matisse himself acknowledged his commitment to nature and nature, he said that entirely depends on his models: "I never wanted to belong to a school so limited that it would have prevented me from" touching the ground "like Antey to gain strength and health. It is when I am in accord with my perception of nature that I consider myself free to deviate from it in order to better convey what I feel ".
Gertrude Stein, an American writer and a big fan of both artists, who later gave preference to Picasso, laughed with laughter that her housekeeper, looking at "The blue naked", Exclaimed indignantly: "It is necessary to make such a beautiful woman!". But that the woman Matisse - beautiful, she doubts did not arise. From women from the canvases of Picasso, perhaps, too, it would be worth keeping away.
Matisse sought to harmonize his sense of color with the space and depict the reality that passed through his perception - the Cubists wanted to reshape reality. Italian artist Gino Severini so defined this difference: "Where Matisse goes from perception to idea, the Cubists go from idea to perception".
Author: Alain Esaulova
"Red fish and sculptureWere created during the Matisse experiment with Cubism. The picture is certainly fauvistic, but "here was Cubism", in any case, as if passing nearby. The elongated silhouettes of the fish are maximally flattened and generalized, the flowers in the vase are created by circular spots. At the same time the picture is written in a unique Matisse color scale, a dense blue background (blue artist favored - sometime in his youth, with all his savings, he bought a blue butterfly and selflessly painted it), bright red fish and red spots of flowers (“Fauvism is when there is red!”, Matisse once said). Used by the beloved Matisse open window motif. Sculpture in the form of a naked woman is depicted by a hot pink color, its forms are pointedly geometrized.
Matisse's connection with Cubism and its leader Pablo Picasso - the topic is interesting. Matisse and Picasso had a relationship that cannot be defined in one word, a kind of friendship-enmity-rivalry-recognition. Matisse was a witness at the wedding of Picasso with ballerina Olga Khokhlova. The great Cubist described the difference between the two to the great Fauvist: "I have mastered the drawing and looking for a color, you have mastered the color and are looking for a drawing". And Matisse believed that they are with Picasso - like the North and South Pole. Their paths were completely different, but both influenced one another, and all further world painting.
But, perhaps, the most profound difference between them is not on the color-form scale. Matisse never thought about abandoning nature, from figurativeness. With realism - yes, he said goodbye early. But to dispense with the connection of the image with reality - he did not even think about that, abstraction was utterly alien to him. The famous saying Matisse: "If I had met such a woman (from my paintings - ed.) In my life, I would have run away from her in horror", does not contradict this at all. The woman portrayed by Matisse remains a woman, and the fish are precisely the fish, even if we have scarlet flaws in front of us, as in this picture. Matisse himself acknowledged his commitment to nature and nature, he said that entirely depends on his models: "I never wanted to belong to a school so limited that it would have prevented me from" touching the ground "like Antey to gain strength and health. It is when I am in accord with my perception of nature that I consider myself free to deviate from it in order to better convey what I feel ".
Gertrude Stein, an American writer and a big fan of both artists, who later gave preference to Picasso, laughed with laughter that her housekeeper, looking at "The blue naked", Exclaimed indignantly: "It is necessary to make such a beautiful woman!". But that the woman Matisse - beautiful, she doubts did not arise. From women from the canvases of Picasso, perhaps, too, it would be worth keeping away.
Matisse sought to harmonize his sense of color with the space and depict the reality that passed through his perception - the Cubists wanted to reshape reality. Italian artist Gino Severini so defined this difference: "Where Matisse goes from perception to idea, the Cubists go from idea to perception".
Author: Alain Esaulova
