Matisse, Gauguin and Primitivism

Week Six Post Six (Gauguin and Primitivism)

Option Two

Henri Matisse painted The Blue Nude (Souvenir at Biskra) in 1907. Biskra is a city in northern Algeria (Africa) that was built around an oasis and has been known as a winter vacation resort spot for a long time.   In The Blue Nude Matisse uses the heavy black outlines and bright palette of the primitivists to convey the quality of light in a sunny desert oasis.  This painting is a study of light reminiscent of Impressionism in that the palms in the background are painted in much warmer tones than the shaded area in which the figure reclines.  Her hues vary from Caucasian flesh tones to cool blues and purples in an exaggerated play of highlights and shadows.  Matisse is referencing the orientalist style in that the figure is the lounging female typical of this mode while he is referencing primitivism at the same time.  Combining these styles is a difference and makes the work avant-garde.

Though we like to think of artists as liberal and open to new ideas they are bound to be influenced by their culture.  The Euro centric, andro-centric view of life shows up in the attitudes toward the “other” in works by both Matisse and Gauguin, especially when it comes to female nudes.  The hopes of European straight males to gain life experience by travelling to exotic locations where women run or lounge around naked all day (and are therefore regarded as sexually available) are raised by these depictions.  I’m of course seeing a resemblance between Gauguin’s Manao Tupapau (Spirit of the Dead Watching) and The Blue Nude both of which create a sleepy sensual mood mainly through color palette and subject matter.  Matisse is going a little farther by using less realism in color, the flattening of the picture plane, distorting the figure and also in showing frontal breasts to leave no doubt as to the gender of the figure.  There is also a parallel in the attitudes about primitive, simple locations.  Both Biskra (Matisse) and Pont-Aven, Brittany (Gauguin) were in truth resort towns where Europeans often went to escape winter weather.  True, they still held on to traditional ways of life and manners of dress, etc. in those places  but whether life there was really primitive or simple is open to debate.  I suppose Gauguin had the right to call Tahiti primitive and exotic but the resort towns were only a short train and/or ship ride away from Europe by the late 1800’s. 

Matisse, unlike Gauguin does not seem to be deferring to any religious vision.  His work is more direct, decorative and therefore possibly less pretentious.  He is somehow closer to being primitive himself no matter the location that he travels toward to paint.  He seems to have a deeper understanding of simplicity than Gauguin and this may be because of his greater identification with the other and his own primitive side.   He is still depicting an idea and conveying a mood but in his nudes we get the sense that he (simply) doesn’t want to bother with painting clothes.  The Blue Nude has the colors of clothing on her body without the depiction of fabric.  Though I think he likes to glory in the colors of costumes and landscapes in deference to Impressionists and references primitivism and orientalism in subject matter he does combine these influences into his own style.