Read Online Selected Essays of John Berger by John Berger - Free Book Online
Authors: John Berger
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fifteen or twenty years coming nearest to his ideal.
Matisse’s achievement rests on his use – or in the context of contemporary Western art one could say his invention – of pure colour. The phrase, however, must be defined. Pure colour as Matisse understood it had nothing to do with abstract colour. He repeatedly declared that colour ‘must serve expression’. What he wanted to express was ‘the nearly religious feeling’ he had towards sensuous life – towards the blessings of sunlight, flowers, women, fruit, sleep.
When colour is incorporated into a regular pattern – as in a Persian rug – it is a subsidiary element: the logic of the pattern must come first. When colour is used in painting it usually serves either as a decorative embellishment of the forms – as, say, in Botticelli – or as a force charging them with extra emotion – as in Van Gogh. In Matisse’s later works colour becomes the entirely dominant factor. His colours seem neither to embellish nor charge the forms, but to uplift and carry them on the very surface of the canvas. His reds, blacks, golds, ceruleans, flow over the canvas with the strength and yet utter placidity of water above a weir, the forms carried along on their current.
Obviously such a process implies some distortion. But the distortion isfar more of people’s preconceived ideas about art than of nature. The numerous drawings that Matisse always made before he arrived at his final colour-solution are evidence of the pains he took to preserve the essential character of his subject whilst at the same time making it ‘buoyant’ enough to sail on the tide of his colour scheme. Certainly the effect of these paintings is what he hoped. Their subjects invite, one embarks, and then the flow of their colour-areas holds one in such sure equilibrium that one has a sense of perpetual motion – a sense of movement with all friction removed.
Nobody who has not painted himself can fully appreciate what lies behind Matisse’s mastery of colour. It is comparatively easy to achieve a certain unity in a picture either by allowing one colour to dominate or by muting all the colours. Matisse did neither. He clashed his colours together like cymbals and the effect was like a lullaby.
Perhaps the best way of defining Matisse’s genius is to compare him with some of his contemporaries who were also concerned with colour. Bonnard’s colours dissolve, making his subjects unattainable, nostalgic. Matisse’s colours could hardly be more present, more blatant, and yet achieve a peace which is without a trace of nostalgia. Braque has cultivated his sensibility until it has become precious. Matisse broadened his sensibility until it was as wide as his colour range, and said that he wanted his art to be ‘something like a good armchair’. Dufy shared Matisse’s sense of enjoyment and his colours were as gay as the fětes he painted; but Matisse’s colours, no less bright, go beyond gaiety to affirm contentment. The only man who possibly equals Matisse as a colourist is Léger. But their aims are so different that they can hardly be compared. Léger is essentially an epic, civic artist; Matisse essentially a lyrical and personal one.
I said that Matisse’s paintings and designs of the last fifteen years were his greatest. Obviously he produced fine individual works before he was seventy. Yet not I think till then had he the complete control of his art that he needed. It was, as he himself said, a question of ‘organizing the brain’. Like most colourists he was an intuitive painter, but he realized that it was necessary to select rigorously from his many ‘instincts’ to make them objective in order to be able to build upon them rationally. In terms of the picture this control makes the all-important difference between recording a sensation and re-constructing an emotion. The Fauves, whom Matisse led, recorded sensations. Their paintings were (and are) fresh and stimulating, but they
Matisse’s achievement rests on his use – or in the context of contemporary Western art one could say his invention – of pure colour. The phrase, however, must be defined. Pure colour as Matisse understood it had nothing to do with abstract colour. He repeatedly declared that colour ‘must serve expression’. What he wanted to express was ‘the nearly religious feeling’ he had towards sensuous life – towards the blessings of sunlight, flowers, women, fruit, sleep.
When colour is incorporated into a regular pattern – as in a Persian rug – it is a subsidiary element: the logic of the pattern must come first. When colour is used in painting it usually serves either as a decorative embellishment of the forms – as, say, in Botticelli – or as a force charging them with extra emotion – as in Van Gogh. In Matisse’s later works colour becomes the entirely dominant factor. His colours seem neither to embellish nor charge the forms, but to uplift and carry them on the very surface of the canvas. His reds, blacks, golds, ceruleans, flow over the canvas with the strength and yet utter placidity of water above a weir, the forms carried along on their current.
Obviously such a process implies some distortion. But the distortion isfar more of people’s preconceived ideas about art than of nature. The numerous drawings that Matisse always made before he arrived at his final colour-solution are evidence of the pains he took to preserve the essential character of his subject whilst at the same time making it ‘buoyant’ enough to sail on the tide of his colour scheme. Certainly the effect of these paintings is what he hoped. Their subjects invite, one embarks, and then the flow of their colour-areas holds one in such sure equilibrium that one has a sense of perpetual motion – a sense of movement with all friction removed.
Nobody who has not painted himself can fully appreciate what lies behind Matisse’s mastery of colour. It is comparatively easy to achieve a certain unity in a picture either by allowing one colour to dominate or by muting all the colours. Matisse did neither. He clashed his colours together like cymbals and the effect was like a lullaby.
Perhaps the best way of defining Matisse’s genius is to compare him with some of his contemporaries who were also concerned with colour. Bonnard’s colours dissolve, making his subjects unattainable, nostalgic. Matisse’s colours could hardly be more present, more blatant, and yet achieve a peace which is without a trace of nostalgia. Braque has cultivated his sensibility until it has become precious. Matisse broadened his sensibility until it was as wide as his colour range, and said that he wanted his art to be ‘something like a good armchair’. Dufy shared Matisse’s sense of enjoyment and his colours were as gay as the fětes he painted; but Matisse’s colours, no less bright, go beyond gaiety to affirm contentment. The only man who possibly equals Matisse as a colourist is Léger. But their aims are so different that they can hardly be compared. Léger is essentially an epic, civic artist; Matisse essentially a lyrical and personal one.
I said that Matisse’s paintings and designs of the last fifteen years were his greatest. Obviously he produced fine individual works before he was seventy. Yet not I think till then had he the complete control of his art that he needed. It was, as he himself said, a question of ‘organizing the brain’. Like most colourists he was an intuitive painter, but he realized that it was necessary to select rigorously from his many ‘instincts’ to make them objective in order to be able to build upon them rationally. In terms of the picture this control makes the all-important difference between recording a sensation and re-constructing an emotion. The Fauves, whom Matisse led, recorded sensations. Their paintings were (and are) fresh and stimulating, but they
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