Blood red, life red, Venetian red, mystery red. This is one of the most surprising paintings of Matisse and the 20th century. This red which covers everything, but reveals the outlines of a chest of drawers or an armchair, six pieces of furniture in total, as well as various small objects and eleven paintings on the walls reproduced at the scale of the room. Neither a truly figurative work nor a completely abstract painting. “L’Atelier rouge”, a work plan, a life plan.
In 1911, Henri Matisse41 years old, married and father of three children, finally comes out of relative poverty, thanks to the Russian collector Sergei Shchukin with whom he has a solid partnership. He had a real tailor-made workshop built for the first time in Issy-les-Moulineaux, and painted it. As a symbol of its new foundation. It was an order from his rich patron.
Matisse offers him the same price as his previous work, “The Pink Workshop”, which is more realistic, at 10,000 francs. Zero. Niet! The Russian refuses the canvas. The painter had sensed his fears, writing him this strange sentence: “Did I tell you that the painting represented my workshop? » So this was not obvious.
Another painting under the painting
It is only at the last moment that Matisse, until then faithful to very figurative scenes, displays this red which changes everything. He himself seems surprised by his gesture. The exhibition presented by the Louis Vuitton Foundation (Paris 16th arrondissement) was born from a revelation: a few years ago, the restorers of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, on the occasion of a change in the setting, discovered that other colors, pink, blue, ocher, had first been painted over the entire surface, right down to the edge. Another painting under the painting.
These realistic colors were those of the workshop. “It wasn’t planned for it to be red,” says one of the four people responsible for this restoration, in a short film of the exhibition. Matisse let his initial painting sit for over a month, then took it back and applied the color “almost in one go.”
“L’Atelier rouge”, purchased by the MoMA in New York in 1949, gave rise to a veneration among American painters abstract, like Mark Rothko. The exhibition brings together for the first time this masterpiece and the eleven paintings then hung in the studio and which appear on the canvas. The effect is striking.
From Neo-Impressionism to Fauvism
Different periods of the artist are represented, neo-impressionism At fauvism. Rare works, brought together by the American Museum and the National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen, at the origin of this exhibition which is visiting the three countries.
Other paintings show dominant reds or blues which, to varying degrees, tip the figurative subject, a room or a nude model, into a colorful flow.
This exhibition tells a story with endless drawers: one of the paintings reproduced was destroyed by its author, without explanation. There isn’t always one. Matisse had a flash. Red will return, but this breakthrough is not followed by a shift towards abstraction. He was absolutely right.
We joke: the neighboring exhibition, which echoes the Foundation, celebrates Ellsworth Kelly, who died in 2015, an American artist very influenced by Matisse, and who, under the influence of his master, shifts into a colorful geometric abstraction. It’s square, but less complex. Sorry, but Matisse’s questions are better than Kelly’s answers. One works in depth, the other on the surface.
“Matisse: The Red Workshop”, Louis Vuitton Foundation (Paris 16th), from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays; 9 p.m. Friday; from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays; closed on Tuesdays. 10-16 euros, from May 4 to September 9.
