La Négresse Explained

La Négresse
Artist:Henri Matisse
Year:1952–53
Type:Cut paper painted with gouache
Height Metric:453.9
Width Metric:623.3
Height Imperial:178 11/16
Width Imperial:245 3/8
Metric Unit:cm
Imperial Unit:in
Museum:National Gallery of Art
City:Washington, D.C.

La Négresse (1952–53) by Henri Matisse is a gouache découpée, made of cut pieces of colored paper.

Medium

Starting in the 1930s, Matisse began to experiment with creating art by cutting paper into shapes. By 1950, he had primarily shifted to this mode of art making, perhaps because his health and disabilities made painting on a large scale difficult.[1] These "cut-outs" were often mural-sized and made from pieces of paper painted with gouache.[2]

La Négresse was first pinned onto the wall at his apartment in Nice, France around 1952.[3] He rearranged the composition until early 1953.[4] It takes up an entire wall. A newspaper review called the figure "a giantess."[5]

Subject or Inspiration

La Négresse may be inspired by Josephine Baker, a black American dancer whose popularity reached its height in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s.[6] One of Baker's famous outfits was a skirt made from bananas, which Matisse may be invoking in the orange-yellow forms around the figure's waist.[7] Baker's association with jazz music may have also inspired Matisse, who had previously designed a book titled Jazz (1947). Matisse's depiction has been criticized as reiterating "racialized clichés in the enlarged belly and hips." Others have proposed that Matisse presented black women as beautiful.[8]

Other scholars propose that the figure may be of another famous dancer, Yvette Chauviré. Matisse had created an earlier work about a dancer (Creole Dancer, 1950) that art critic Louis Aragon identified as Katherine Dunham, who Matisse had seen perform.[9] The work may also be an imagined dancer or amalgamation of the previously discussed figures.

Reception

The work has been praised as "the culmination of Matisse's art." It was acquired by the National Gallery of Art in 1973.[10]

In 2018, the work was referenced in the title of Denise Murrell's exhibition and catalog Posing Modernity: the Black Model from Manet to Matisse.

See also

References

  1. http://www.centrepompidou.fr/education/ressources/ENS-matisse-EN/ENS-matisse-en.htm "Henri Matisse"
  2. Web site: Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs. 2021-01-20. Museum of Modern Art.
  3. Book: Cullinan. Nicholas. Henri Matisse: the cut-outs. The Museum of Modern Art. Buchberg, Karl D.; Cullinan, Nicholas; Hauptman, Jodi; Sirota, Nicholas; Friedman, Samantha; Frigeri, Flavia. 2014. 978-0-87070-915-9. New York. 196. Chromatic Composition. 859305247.
  4. Book: Hauptman. Jodi. Henri Matisse: the cut-outs. The Museum of Modern Art. Buchberg, Karl D.; Cullinan, Nicholas; Hauptman, Jodi; Sirota, Nicholas; Friedman, Samantha; Frigeri, Flavia. 2014. 978-0-87070-915-9. New York. 196. Bodies and Waves. 859305247.
  5. Richard, Paul (1977). "The Cutouts of Matisse: Seabirds, Ponies and Acrobats: Masterpieces from Scissors Seabirds and Ponies: The Designs of Matisse." The Washington Post, Sept. 9, 1977, B1, B11.
  6. Millard. Charles W.. 1978. The Matisse Cut-Outs. The Hudson Review. 31. 2. 326. 10.2307/3849913. 3849913 . 0018-702X.
  7. Wright, Alistair (Sept. 2014). "Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs". Artforum International, 53, 370-371,12. "La Négresse, 1952–53, a work not in this show but inspired by the films of Josephine Baker, reiterates racialized clichés in the enlarged belly and hips and in the abstracted yellow form that represents Baker's notorious banana skirt. (In the catalogue, the curators celebrate Matisse's invention of a new visual sign for the skirt, but it is a sign utterly reliant on ready-made stereotypes.)"
  8. Book: Murrell, Denise. Posing modernity : the black model from Manet and Matisse to today. Yale University Press. Wallach Art Gallery, Musée d'Orsay. 2018. 978-0-300-25764-9. New Haven. 1161990675.
  9. Tompkins Lewis, Mary (December 3, 2018). "Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today' Review: A Groundbreaking Look; an Exhibition at Columbia Includes Manet, Matisse, Bearden and Many Others." Wall Street Journal. ProQuest.
  10. Web site: Henri Matisse, La Négresse, 1952. 2021-01-20. National Gallery of Art.

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