KAREN WILKIN
85
and this ambiguity of edge, along with the delicacy of modeling, the
warm and cool tonal shifts that suggest female anatomy, allies the
Chicago
Bathers
more closely to Cezanne in fact and in spirit than any–
thing in Matisse's previous work. The sheer evidence oflabor, the dense,
brushy worked surface of the picture evokes, too, the sense of slow ac–
cretion so typical of Cezanne.
Bathers
by
a River
is a summation of
all
of Matisse's preceding con–
cerns, a momentary coming to terms with his admiration for Cezanne
and a definitive response to Picasso's
Demoiselles
(and to Cubism in gen–
eral) . The picture points ahead, as well. Before it went to Chicago,
Bathers
by
a River
hung in the lobby of New York's Valentine Gallery
for an extended period and had a notable effect on many postwar
American painters. Robert Motherwell is the obvious example. For
Matisse, too, it was a pivotal painting. He kept returning to this dislo–
cated, existential vision of Eden, a long way from the sunny idyll of
Le
bonhel4r de vivre,
and echoes of both these solemn, faceless goddesses and
their severe, geometric world inform much of what followed: the grave
dancers of the Barnes mural, the blue nudes of the cutouts, and much
more, even the most sensually patterned and relaxed of Matisse's subse–
quent works.
So much is striking about the paintings of this decade: the layering
of colors, overpainting that creates unimaginable hues of extraordinary
density and brilliance, or equal intensity wrung from transparent, seem–
ingly one-shot washes of color, casual as watercolor. Portraits distin–
guished at once by staggering liberties - bold scratching, overdrawing,
canceling out, limbs that detach from bodies, furniture that disappears ,
diagrams of body dynamics superimposed on recognizeable images - and
at the same time, scrupulous attention to fashion details - the cut of a
dress collar, a modish hat, fetching high heels, a decoration proudly
worn in a buttonhole. Why don't these portraits succumb to mere
anecdote? for the same reason that even the most ordinary hotel room
of the Nice Period can be the source of an inspired picture: Matisse's
unfailing visual intelligence, his consummate ability to transform potential
fashion-plates, predictable studio set-ups, and dispiriting interiors into vi–
sual relationships of startling lucidity.
Worth noting: Elderfield has assembled most of the paintings and
sculpture that punctuate
The Red Studio
(1911, Museum of Modern Art,
New York) in the show.
r
suppose this could be construed as a private
joke of a sort, but how marvelous to be able to see for ourselves the
works Matisse chose to enumerate.
