Lecture 45: Beyond Impressionism—From Seurat to Matisse
Of course, we must look at The Starry Night (1889), a painting that is
majestic, Expressionistic, and unexpected. This painting is often cited as one
of the most important precursors of German and Nordic Expressionism, but
as at least one historian has observed, it is “more powerful and imaginative
than anything in later Expressionistic art, which proceeded from a similar
emotionally charged vision of nature.” The paintings of these months are
full of passion and turmoil, although only The Starry Night pushes these
emotions to the extreme. In this case, the extreme is abstraction, not in the
20 th-century sense, but in the sense of painting the natural world from memory
and imagination, rather than face to face. In a letter to Emile Bernard, six
months later, at the beginning of December 1889, Van Gogh wrote, “...And
yet, once again, I let myself go reaching for stars that are too big—a new
failure—and I have had enough of it.” He died in Auvers-sur-Oise in 1890,
a suicide.The painters whose work we have been looking at in the last few lectures
prepared the way for the painters of the 20th century, to whom we will
now turn our attention. We look at Henri Matisse (1868–1954) ¿ rst,
because he was already a mature artist when Gauguin and Cézanne died,
and he consciously bridged the 19th and 20th centuries as he developed his
art. We see ¿ rst Portrait of Madame Matisse (The Green Line) (1905).
The nickname for the painting came from its ¿ rst owners and, of course,
referred to the dark green stripe running vertically from the hairline of Mme.
Matisse to her upper lip and continuing in a haphazard way onto her chin
and neck, not to mention spilling over into the area surrounding her right
eye. The background is divided into three distinct zones of color—green,
violet, and red-orange—and her hair is painted in blue and black. It is, of
course, the abstract, expressive use of color that distinguishes the painting
and that thoroughly upset many viewers of Matisse’s work in 1904–1905.
In discussing the work of Matisse, a critic made a reference to fauves (“wild
beasts”), and the derogatory name has stuck for a century, though now it is
an accolade. But why was the painting so startling? It should not have been
unsettling or unexpected in light of the paintings of Gauguin or Van Gogh,
because the abstract use of color had been announced by them in works of
the preceding 15 years. As a portrait, Mme Matisse is digni¿ ed and restrained
in every way except color.