Tag Archives: Maurice de Vlaminck

spy vs. spy: wilde for dreyfus

Remembering Dreyfus. The time was la belle epoque, and the stage was France. But the chief actors in the drama- the double agents, perfidious generals, conniving politicians, and anti-Semites posing as patriots- have remained on the political scene ever since… … Continue reading

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in the pink

When Henri Matisse painted the Pink Blouse in 1924, he was a successfully established artist living in comfort in Nice. Some twenty years earlier, at another Mediterranean seaport, he had to struggle to shape his own distinctive style. It was … Continue reading

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MATISSE: Cut,Paste & Taste

That Matisse would abandon oil painting and adopt a new technique so late in his career was a surprise to many people, although it need not have been. Paper cutouts were, of course, convenient for a semi-invalid, but Matisse had … Continue reading

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PICASSO & IDEALS OF PEACE: Better Red than Fed

Pablo Picasso found himself in Paris during World War II. Stranded……. Overall, reading through Matisse’s correspondence with Camoin in La Revue de l’Art (12, 1971) makes me suspect that Matisse’s behavior during Vichy had little to do directly with the … Continue reading

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MATISSE: War Years and the Morals of Color

Certainly, the war years seems to bring out some ambiguous behavior on the part of French artists in occupied France. On the one hand, it greatly reduced the competition from foreign sources and citizens not of the “vieux souche” , … Continue reading

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MATISSE:Supreme Indifference to Context

During the war years, Matisse lived first in his apartment in Nice and later in a rented villa in the ancient hilltown of Vence, recovering slowly from the abdominal operation of March, 1941, that left him a semi-invalid for the … Continue reading

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MATISSE: Line Dance With Color

Matisse emerged from WWII with a reputation among living painters second only to that of Picasso. The fresh interest in Matisse was stimulated by a late flowering in many phases of his art- drawings, book designs, and oil paintings- which … Continue reading

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PICASSO HO HUM:The Banality of Evil?

The story of Picasso’s Guernica is in itself a study of myth and of enduring magic….Even Picasso could not a foreseen the impact of Guernica and his own struggles living in occupied France. The political situation forced Picasso into isolation. … Continue reading

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PAPER TIGERS : Hunting Traces of Solitude And GAIETY

In art sometimes, the more things change, the more nothing is the same. The paper cutouts were Matisse’s final flowering; a last expression of this articulation of traces of solitude and gaiety, what he called “the eternal conflict between drawing … Continue reading

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EXUBERANT BUT NOT ABERRANT: No Orgies Of COLOR

Henri Matisse was termed a “wild beast”, a fauve. Traditional art was soon to become an irrelevancy, an anachronism, as experimental art began to develop its own audience, its own markets, and its own rationales apart from being merely anti-traditionalist. It seemed … Continue reading

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