Go up or down? This is the question that arises at the entrance to the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris. To go up is to go towards the exhibition dedicated to The Red Workshop (1911), by Henri Matisse (1869-1954). Going down is starting with the Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015) retrospective. That they take place together is easily understood. The two painters had in common the experience of colors brought to their highest point of intensity and Kelly watched Matisse throughout his life. So it is undoubtedly preferable to obey the chronology, Matisse thus acting as an introducer to Kelly.
This Matisse more precisely: that of The Red Workshop, one of his paintings where the question of color arises with particular acuteness and difficulty due to its genesis. In October 1911, at the request of his Moscow collector Sergei Shchukin (1854-1936), Matisse undertook a large-scale painting, 1.81 meters high, 2.19 meters long, which was to be hung in the private mansion. of the patron. It represents the interior of the painter’s studio in Issy-les-Moulineaux (Hauts-de-Seine): a vast and high space that he had built in 1909 near the family home.
The motif has several advantages: the artist only has to look around him, he can arrange older works at his leisure and the canvas will naturally fit in with the Matisses that Shchukine already owns. Numerous paintings are displayed on the walls or on the floor, sculptures on stands, ceramics, furniture and flowers. So far nothing very unusual, especially since Matisse has already cited his own works many times in subsequent paintings.
Blood red coating
In this anthology of himself he places one of his main allegorical compositions, Luxury II, from 1907-1908, two paintings which refer to his beginnings and to Fauvism, a nude with a strong sexual charge, flowers and nudes of bronze or earth: autobiography and self-celebration go hand in hand. But the execution takes an unexpected turn. After interrupting his work for a certain time – a month at least, perhaps more – Matisse covered a large part of the surface with so-called “Venice” red, dense and matte.
Only his paintings and bronzes escape the recovery, which appears to have been carried out in a short time, with ample and rapid gestures. Floor and walls disappear under this flow. There were previously blues, pinks and ochres there, revealed the work of the restorers, presented in a video which could have been longer as it is so informative. The metamorphosis is radical, so much so that Shchukin refuses The Red Workshop in that state. The first buyer, a Londoner, only acquired it in 1927 to decorate the Gargoyle Club, a place of chic pleasures. It remained there for a decade, was sold and moved to New York, where MoMA bought it in 1949.
You have 64.93% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
