Matisse : radical invention, 1913-1917 /
Stephanie D'Alessandro, John Elderfield.
- 1st ed.
- Chicago, Ill. : New Haven, Conn. : Art Institute of Chicago ; Distributed by Yale University Press, c2010.
- 368 p. : ill. (chiefly col.) ; 34 cm.
"Published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same title co-organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Exhibition dates: Art Institute of Chicago, March 20, 2010-June 20, 2010; Museum of Modern Art, July 18, 2010-October 11, 2010"--T.p. verso. At foot of title: Art Institute of Chicago ; Museum of Modern Art ; Yale University Press, New Haven and London.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 356-361) and index.
Matisse, 1913-1917, and the methods of modern construction -- Defining a new art -- Chronology 1907-1913 ; Modernism and tradition ; Opportunity and invention ; Construction by means of color -- Changing direction -- Chronology 1913-1914 ; A painful effort ; New ambitions -- Art as experiment -- Chronology 1914-1917 ; Interruptions and returns ; The challenge of painting ; Charting a new course -- Coda : the experiment remembered.
This book examines the working method, experimental techniques, and compositional choices Matisse used in works created between 1913 and 1917. The works that Henri Matisse (1869-1954) executed between late 1913 and 1917 are among his most demanding, experimental, and enigmatic. Often sharply composed, heavily reworked, and dominated by the colors black and gray, these compositions are rigorously abstracted and purged of nearly all descriptive detail. Although they have typically been treated as unrelated to one another, as aberrations within the artist's oeuvre, or as singular responses to Cubism or World War I, this book reveals the deep connections among them.