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Matisse, Henri - VM - William Edgar
Henri Matisse: Chapelle du Rosaire, Vence, France
Matisse’s Spiritual Pilgrimage to La Chapelle de Vence
By William Edgar
When he set out to create what perhaps is his best-known work, La Chapelle de Vence, which was completed in 1951, Henri Matisse declared, “I started with the secular and now in the evening of my life, I naturally end with the divine.” This statement should not be taken to mean Matisse began as a worldly sinner and moved on to being a full-orbed believer in the evangelical sense. But it does tell us a great deal about his religious disposition and development.
Matisse certainly did evolve throughout his life, as an artist, and a human being. He rarely commented on his general personal development.[1] He did occasionally remark on the technical aspects of his approach to certain paintings. For example, in the well-known notes recorded by the art critic, Charles Estienne, discussing Matisse’s much-loved Danse I, he is reported to have said that he began from nature, then he quickly represented “fresh and superficial” impressions. He finally tried to achieve serenity, a vague sense of resolution, giving the painting its ultimate significance.[2]
Serenity can be felt in many of Matisse’s paintings. Yet the word is deceptive. Resolution might be a better word. Matisse is often compared with the other great pioneer of modern art, his friend and rival, Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). It could be argued that these two defining artists of the twentieth century were stylistically opposites. Yet, strangely, they had much in common. One superficial comparison says, “In Matisse we see the decorative, in Picasso the destructive.” This is because when we think of Matisse, we think of his many Flowers or the Open Window in Collioure with its layered embellishments. And when we think of Picasso, we think of his iconoclastic Demoiselles d’Avignon, or his war protest Guernica.
Henri Matisse: Open Window in Collioure (1905)
Beneath the surface there is a surprising amount that unites them. It may seem odd, but Picasso was once quoted as saying, “If I were not making the paintings I make, I would paint like Matisse.” Matisse returned the compliment. What could be meant by such avowals? Here is one proposal. Consider the fact that Matisse is the inaugurator of Le Fauvisme, a style featuring wild shapes and colors. André Dérain, Matisse’s friend and collaborator, called the fauviste colors “sticks of dynamite.” Matisse more tenderly said he was trying to make colors sing. To our astonishment these were revolutionary views. As Picasso would say of Matisse’s masterpiece, Le Bonheur de Vivre (1906), “He’s got the sun in his gut.” Significantly, this favorite painting was greeted with hostility, as were many of Picasso’s works. Why? Because nothing like them had been done before.
Henri Matisse: Le bonheur de vivre (1905–1906)
Both artists were rebelling against the established views of the Académie des Beaux Arts. Matisse and Picasso took the trajectories of The Impressionists – as well as Paul Cézanne – who first challenged the academic style, and went much further. Picasso expressed his revolt more aggressively, continuing Cézanne’s search for basic structures, yet with a more subversive undertone. His angular faces and militant shapes sought to exaggerate Cézanne’s more gentle geometric patterns, at least as he saw them. Matisse built more playfully on Cézanne’s abstractions, exemplified by his Bathers. Both artists rejected the grand tradition of the Renaissance that culminated in the Académie. It could be said Matisse responded to Western tradition more subtly than Picasso, almost lyrically. Which is why it may seem strange that his bucolic Le Bonheur de Vivre garnered such hostile reactions. This painting is apparently a pastoral scene, full of the kind of quietude that would characterize most of his later works. But that “serenity” packed a punch, at least to the educated eye. In its way, the painting is as subversive as Picasso’s.
How does the Chapelle de Vence fit into this narrative? The story behind the Chapelle du Rosaire, Vence is fascinating. He said the chapel was “… for me the culmination of an entire life of work and the flowering of the enormous, the sincere and the difficult.” It took him four years to design the extraordinary interior of the space that the Belgian architect, August Perret (1869-1954), created.
What is striking is the deceptive minimalism of Matisse’s design. It’s pure restraint. It takes a while before being smitten by the spirituality of the place. But many have been. The chapel is modern, but again, deceptively so. Matisse had truly ended with “the divine,” but not necessarily a typical evangelical conversion.
Matisse had moved to Vence in 1943 to escape the bombing in Nice. He had become strongly connected to an order of Dominican nuns there through Monique Bourgeois, who had nursed him and modeled for him previously before becoming Sister Jacques-Marie. She prevailed on him to participate in the project which he did resoundingly to the enrichment of both the Church and Art!
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Henri Matisse: Chapelle du Rosaire, 1947-1952, Vence, France.
Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was one of the undisputed masters of 20th century art, was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was also a printmaker and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter. Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture. Although he was initially labeled a Fauve (wild beast), by the 1920s he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. His mastery of the expressive language of colour and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art. Source: https://www.henrimatisse.org/
William Edgar (Honors Music B.A., Harvard University; MDiv, Westminster Theological Seminary; DTh, Université de Genève; D.D. Faculté Jean Calvin, Aix-en-Provence) is Professor of Apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, USA, where he has taught for over twenty years. He is ordained in the Presbyterian Church in America. He directs the gospel-jazz band Renewal. Edgar is currently Professeur Associé at the Faculté Jean Calvin, Aix-en-Provence, France. Edgar’s scholarly interests include apologetics, theology, aesthetics, African-American music, and ethics. He belongs to several learned societies, including the American Musicological Society and the Society for Ethnomusicology.
ArtWay Visual Meditation 15 September 2024
[1] In a rare instance, to his friend Guillaume Apollinaire he reflected on the “perilous journey toward the discovery of the personality.” Matisse, écrits et propos sur l’art, (Paris: Hermann.fr, 2021) 54.
[2] From “Des tendances de la peinture modern”’ Les Nouvelles, 13 April 1909.