Matisse at Tate Modern

I was pleasantly surprised today by Matisse's work today. I haven't paid much attention to Matisse in the past, and was not particularly interested in his work before. It was because I felt that Matisse's work lacked the element of violence which is so apparent in the works of artists like Francis Bacon, Ken Currie & Jenny Saville. Matisse was, I thought, too "clean", too vibrant, to optimistic for my tastes. However, because this show was focussed primarily on his cut-out work, I thought it important to see it because of my own work with collage; that I may well be able to learn something from seeing his works.





And indeed I did learn from seeing the show, despite the fact that I felt its curation was incredibly unimaginative. The work was displayed unimaginatively in many of the rooms, following a linear timeline according to the date of making, instead of grouping together different pieces which reflected similar themes.

What I learned from seeing Matisse's cutouts, was to do with fluidity in figurative work, that its not always necessary to reproduce every anatomical detail of a body in order to create effective figures, and in fact doing so may produce the opposite - a loss of dynamism. Matisse's work is incredibly vibrant, pulsing with energy, and as a figurative artist its really essential viewing.