Staving Off Obsession

"It is my dream", wrote Matisse, "to create an art which is filled with balance, purity and calmness, freed from a subject matter that is disconcerting or too attention-seeking. In my paintings, I wish to create a spiritual remedy, similar to a comfortable armchair which provides rest from physical expectation for the spiritually working, the businessman as well as the artist."

Woman in a Purple Coat, 1937,

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas

Flickr photo

Supreme decoration

But denial is essentially antipathetic to Matisse. He was a great celebrator, and to many his most characteristic pictures are the wonderful odalisques he painted in Nice (he loved Nice for the sheer quality of its warm, southern light). Though such a theme was not appreciated at the time, it is impossible for us to look at Odalisque with Raised Arms and feel that Matisse is exploiting her.

The woman herself is unaware of him, lost in private reverie as she surrenders to the sunlight, and she, together with the splendid opulence of her chair, the diaphanous skirt, and the intricately decorated panels on either side, all unite in a majestic whole that celebrates the glory of creation.

It is not her abstract beauty that attracts Matisse, but her concrete reality. He reveals a world of supreme decoration: for example, the small black patches of underarm hair on the odalisque are almost a witty inverted comma mark round the globes of her breasts and the rose pink center of each nipple.

Source: Web Museum