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for cruel flamboyance. In Spurling's descriptions, one can hear the tender
farewell from the fourth act of Puccini's
La Boheme,
as the philosopher
Col line donates his overcoat, a faithful friend, to aid the consumptive Mimi:
You never bowed your worn
back to the rich and rnighty.
In your pockets,
as in tranquil grottoes,
passed philosophers and poets.
Spurling presents details with all the care of Merchant/ Ivory, and even
the most repugnant situations fascinate. For instance, the streets of his birth–
place, Bohain, were "slippery with beet pulp in autumn." Corpses fished
every morning from the Seine were placed for identification on slabs behind
Notre Dame, minutes from Matisse's Paris studio. The shimmering "water–
melon reds and saffron yellows" of Moorish Collioure, a favorite locale for
painting on the Catalan coast, were punctuated by women bearing the
town's chamberpots on their heads to empty them nightly into the sea.
But Spurling builds a larger world beyond just backdrop, especially in
detailing Matisse's rapport with textiles. His own ubiquitous collection, in
part, supported his belief that art was defined by the decorative, the sensu–
ality of visual data. Having grown up amidst Bohain's numerous
hand-operated Jacquard looms, he was sensitized early and followed the
ensuing intense mechanization demanded by voracious appetites in Paris
for fancy velvets, cashmeres and silks. Matisse's favorite, the
toile de Jouy,
a
piece of light and dark blue polished cotton, was more muse than fabric.
Its writhing arabesques enjoyed years of resurrection, most dramatically
interfering with any semblance of traditional perspective in the domestic
scene,
Harmony in Red (La Desserte),
1908. And, in expressing his distaste
for Titian, Veronese and other Venetian painters, Matisse was kind in call–
ing their efforts not art but "superb fabrics, created to satisfY the physical
concerns of their wealthy patrons."
To say the least, Matisse led an active social life. In Spurling's book, his
crucial interactions with artists and dealers are finally put into context.
This reveals that further scrutiny of the interactions between Matisse and
colleagues, based on the art itself, would be helpful. The camaraderie and
competition inside the art world, then as now, do shed light on some of
what feeds creativity. Perhaps most thought-provoking is Matisse's decision
never to seek out Cezanne, the artist who became his conscience: he chose
to know him exclusively through his art.
