In 1909, at the age of 39, Matisse moved from Paris to the town of Issy-les-Moulines, where he would have a studio of his own design. In 1911, he documented the studio scene with The Red Studio, and in 1949, the big red-hued, radical-style work was deposited in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.
In May 2022, "Matisse: Red Studio" MoMA was held, and the exhibition used "Red Studio" as a clue to bring together six existing paintings, three sculptures and a piece of ceramic that appeared in the painting - they were in Matisse's studio when "Red Studio" was painted in 1911. After more than a hundred years, these works are reunited.
Matisse, The Red Studio, 1911
This is an exploration of modern art history by MoMA, drawing on its collections, dissecting Matisse and one of his most recognizable early works in a small but spectacular exhibition.
It's a meticulous attention to a piece from the inside out, and MoMA gives it plenty of room for display. In the first room, The Red Studio appears with the works it depicts to encapsulate the artist's early developments; the second gallery traces the work's journey from Matisse's studio to MoMA in the form of documents and photographs (including having been stored for a long time in a london nightclub), and this exhibition hall also features Matisse's works on indoor and studio themes to observe how red and monochrome are reused in his work. The exhibition culminated in his 1948 work The Red Chamber, after which Matisse gradually switched brushes to scissors and intensely colored paper.
Matisse, The Red Chamber, 1948
The curatorial team led by Ann Temkin, chief curator of MoMA's Painting and Sculpture Division, and Dorthe Aagesen, chief curator of the National Gallery of Denmark (SMK), searched the globe like detectives for works in the painting. The collection comes from museums and private collections, and one of the terracotta figurines resembles MoMA's bronze sculpture, but its existence was rarely known in the past.
A newly discovered clay sculpture of Matisse by the curatorial team (1906-1907), moma collection
Red Studio: Hot monochrome inspired postwar art
The Red Studio was completed in December 1911. The work was commissioned by the Russian textile merchant Sergei Shchukin (1854-1936), and it was with his patronage that Matisse was able to build the studio. Matisse described the piece: "Amazing! Obviously, it's new. "But most people thought it was so new at the time, especially the red that came over the face, so much so that it was rejected by the client." At the Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition in London in 1912 and the Armory Show in New York, Chicago, and Boston in 1913, it was one of the most questioned works by critics and visitors.
Sergei Shukin traveled numerous times between Paris and Moscow over the past 20 years in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His vision and generous hand boldly collected nearly 300 works of western modern art, including 37 paintings by Matisse. Most of his collection was nationalized after the October Revolution in Russia, but The Red Studio remained in the West because it was rejected. At MoMA, Studio Red formed a very different style from Picasso's 1907 Cubist work The Avignon Maiden (1939).
Culturally autonomous, Red Studio has been written into history for its innovation and influenced and inspired modern times. Its novelty lies in the tone: its surface is covered with Venetian red, a deep, luxurious, slightly rusty hue that gives the work an air of abstraction, but it is realistic in its own right, representing a corner of Matisse's new studio.
Mattis, Untitled, 1907 (Plate in the Foreground of The Red Studio)
Matisse, Untitled, 1911
The Red Studio also heralded one of the main elements of postwar modernism, monochrome painting. It reached New York at the beginning of Abstract Expressionism. It can be felt in Barnett Newman's (1905–1970) fiery "Vir Heroicus Sublimis" and Rothko's simple and deep patches of color.
It's an expression of Matisse's values, from paintings and sculptures to an open box of blue chalk... The studio scene is depicted here in its true colors. In addition to the artwork, the painting features two tables, two chairs, a chest of drawers and a pointerless floor clock, where time seems to stand still in the artist's studio, and everything appears almost like a ghost. In the large number of red and ochre outlines, a small amount of pink and blue shimmer can be faintly seen, which should be the remnants of an earlier version of the work.
For Matisse, the studio is a place where the real world has receded, where magic can be created and art can rule the world. Here he absorbed the natural light and solid colors of Fauvism and became obsessed with it. He is essentially an interior designer who designs his own studio, which is the space where he lives and works, sometimes he paints landscapes outside the window, sometimes just depicts the room itself.
Exhibition site
In the first exhibition hall, The Red Studio is surrounded by the works in its paintings. Standing in the middle, looking back and forth between the object and the object in the painting, is a unique experience, and the artist once again refines his own creations in the painting.
Painted in Corsica, The Old Mill, 1898, Matisse was influenced by the pointillist method of projecting the subtle colors and mottled shades of nature on the stone walls in pink, purple and gray. The painting is resting on the floor of The Red Studio, with mottled shadows summed up in purple.
Matisse, Corsica, The Old Mill, 1898
Part of the painting "Red Studio"
Matisse boldly used colors to form large, flat shapes, such as the use of deep blue, green, and pink in Young Sailor II (1906). Although the real-life Le Luxe II (1907-1908) is much more subtle in the use of color, it appears in "Red Studio" as a more general and exciting color, and the original pale human body is also dyed with Venetian red.
Matisse, Young Sailor II, 1906
Matisse, Luxury II, 1907-1908
A studio built for yourself
"Following your visit, we are proud to tell you that we can provide you with a loading and unloading studio based on the drawings, namely a size of 10 meters × 10 meters, a floor height of 0.15 meters, a wall height of 5 meters, and a shed roof with a long side of about 8 meters and a glass of skylight on one side."
On 2 June 1909, the head of the Paris architecture company submitted to Matisse a handwritten proposal for construction, a two-page letter outlining the specifications of an independent studio that would be built in Issy-les-Moulineaux, a newly rented property with Matisse, on the banks of the Seine, 4 miles southwest of downtown Paris. The structure of the studio should be simple, the area should be large, square, with a sloping roof, and the windows should be opened almost completely on one side, bringing natural light into the room.
On June 2, 1909, Lucien Assire, the head of the Paris Construction Company, wrote a letter to Matisse
It was the first studio of Matisse's completely self-designed design, and over the past decade he has been working on art in the attic, in the rooms of small apartments, and in the converted spaces of abandoned monasteries. Now, 39-year-old Matisse is about to have his first pure studio. He designed an iron-framed roof with metal panels for the studio; indoors, wooden ceilings, red fir floors, and wall panels were laid.
As the letter picture shows, the roof is connected to a glass window on the side wall that occupies almost one wall of the studio. The other wall has a six-and-a-half-foot window, and two walls each have a door with an awning on the door. After two months, the studio is ready for delivery.
Matisse, The Studio Under the Eaves, 1903
This studio was very different from his previous studio. In his early years in Paris, Matisse lived and worked in a cramped residence on the shores of Lake Saint-Michel. In October 1905, he finally rented a separate studio at the Ornithological Abbey de Rue de Sèvres in Paris, but because the French government took back the Catholic Church property, Matisse had to move to the Nearby Church of the Sacred Heart on The Boulevard Des Invalides in December 1907. In the Sacré Coeur Matisse there is a relatively spacious living space (rented a room with a huge living room) and a studio. In the spring of 1908, Matisse and two close friends (the German artist Hans Pollmann and the American art collector Sarah Stan) opened an art school on the site of the monastery, and Matisse expanded a space between the Sacré Coeur studio and the art school for teaching, and soon the art school attracted students from Germany and the United States.
Edward Steiken, Portrait of Matisse, 1909
The Matisse family spent a year and a half at the Church of the Sacred Heart, and their way of life was unique. Although the buildings they live in are dilapidated and the gardens are overgrown with weeds due to the long period of unattended care, it has created an art world. Here, there are almost no boundaries between family, friends, and students, and many colleagues have also left their homes and studios here.
Principal Pollman and American painter Patrick Henry Bruce lived upstairs in Matisse. The sculptor Auguste Rodin occupied the ground floor of the monastery school, which is now housed in the Musée Rodin. Rodin rented it because of the recommendation of his friend the poet Rilke, who himself lived here... Suddenly, poets, musicians, actors and other artists of all walks of life crowded this spontaneously created community, which also provided a shelter for artists who were not rich in the center of Paris, but the former glory is now difficult to find.
Soon after, the French government decided to sell the monastery and issued an expulsion order to the occupants in early 1909. But because Matisse was accustomed to the spaciousness and park-like environment, but also confined to the economy, he did not wait to look beyond Paris. In April, he found a residence in nearby Issy-les-Moulino that contained the grounds for a house and a studio. Matisse became one of the few artists in this sparsely populated industrial town.
In the summer of 1917, the path leading to Matisse's studio.
In Issy-les-Moulino, Matisse lived a different life than the Church of the Sacred Heart. Although the monastery was not immediately sold, and the school continued to use the monastery as a school building in the 1909-1910 school year, Mattis, who often visited the school only once a week because of the long distance, realized that as an artist, he could not spend his energy in the classroom. At the same time, Matisse, who was nearly forty years old, was also anxious about his future, and although his students and a few loyal collectors greatly admired his art, many more did not understand his work. Only four years earlier, he had made a name for himself as the controversial leader of "Fauvism," which shocked the art world with its free brushstrokes and vivid, unnaturalism, but by 1909 Cubism, pioneered by Picasso and Georges Braque, had gradually become the mainstream of Parisian art, and Matisse, who had left Paris, was almost no longer at the center of the controversy.
Issy-les-Moulino's spacious new studios offer a new environment for Matisse's art, but how to explore it artistically is by no means easy. The Red Studios of 1911 is a cross-section of exploration.
In October 1911, is the interior of the Studio of Issy-les-Moulino Matisse.
In the spring/summer of 2022, a number of large-scale exhibitions are being held in New York, including those by MoMA's Cézanne, Joseph Yoakum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art's "Surrealism Beyond Borders." These larger exhibitions give people a vague experience. In contrast, "Matisse: Red Studio" exhibits are much less, but make you more focused, as if you had received a gift.
Note: This article is compiled from Roberta Smith's research on Matisse's studio published in The New York Times' "The Independent Life of The Red Studio" and the MoMA website, exhibit curators Dole Arguson and Ann Temkins. The exhibition will run until 10 September and will be held at the National Gallery of Denmark (SMK) from 13 October 2022 to 26 February 2023.
More works on display:
Matisse, The Blue Window, 1913
Matisse, The Studio on Via Saint-Michel, 1916
Matisse, Still Life and Geranium, 1910
![Mattis: Dawn[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)