Matisse answers his critics.
Henry Matisse's famous comment that art should be "like a good armchair," is from his written statement, Notes of a Painter (1908). It is, indeed, the most engaging comment in an essay written in response to criticism that his work was devoid of ideas. His droll quip was a concession, at least, to the objection that he took himself too seriously.
Matisse's painting was not a critical success. It was a crowd pleaser. His acclaim was so great that the critics confined writing about his work to obscure periodicals and, at exhibition, spoke of it in hushed tones of voice. No one disputes that Matisse's style is decorative. He worked at painting like a decorator.
In his own words, from the Notes; "Suppose I have to paint an interior: I have before me a cupboard; it gives me a sensation of vivid red, and I put down a red which satisfies me. A relation is established between this red and the white of the canvas. Let me put a green near the red, and make the floor yellow..."
Granted, Matisse is writing metaphorically, just as with his "good armchair" simile. The quibble is that the point Matisse is trying to get across lacks the force of strong conviction. In Modern Art we expect urgency, necessity, compulsion, as if the artist paints as he must (not because of how he feels.) Matisse, and his painting, are seen as complaisant, self-indulgent, even (dare I say) bourgeois.
The market is not a necessity. The decorator—the professional decorator—works for others. He does not work for himself, in himself, by himself. Matisse's Fauve period paintings may have had such force of conviction. For some inexplicable reason, his style changed—mellowed—into the decorative style of his mature oeuvre. Is it any wonder his critics were puzzled?
Art as a commodity is not a new idea. It is, rather, the original inducement; the art of ideas being a somewhat newer—even revolutionary—motive. Matisse's decorative style tends to be counter-revolutionary—if not decadent—a reminder of the effete elegance that preceded the French Revolution.
I'm not suggesting an audit of Matisse's finances is needed. Materialism, in general, has distinctive features. The criticism of materialism is not that it is materialistic. Another example from the Notes, this time of Matisse's formal materialism:
"Composition, the aim of which should be expression, is modified according to the surface to be covered. If I take a sheet of paper of a given size, my drawing will ave necessary relationship to its format. I would not repeat this drawing on another sheet of different proportions, for example, rectangular instead of square. Nor should be satisfied with a mere enlargement, had I to transfer the drawing to a sheet the same shape, but ten times larger. A drawing must have an expansive force which gives life to the things around it. An artist who wants to transpose a composition from one canvas to another larger one must conceive it anew in order to preserve its expression; he must alter its character and not just square it up onto the larger canvas."
The reverse is as true as Matisse's assertion. An idea is not limited by size, measure, shape, in short, by any material form. An idea may fit nicely on a postage stamp. A mural may contain as little content as the typical product of Matisse's mature style. It is limited by the objects of sense, not by the unlimited objectivity of the mind.
The critics objected to Matisse's two-dimensional formality. They were (understandably) looking for a third dimension—that of depth—in his painting. Matisse's decorative style has, thus, been dismissed as "flat," and as schematic. The design might as well be a stencil. The viewer looks in vain for a foreground, a middle ground, and background -all foundations of cogent picture space.
A truly impressive feat would have been for Matisse to have taken a final step, a daring leap, one into pure abstraction. He died in 1954. At that point in time the first wave of Abstract Expressionism was subsiding. The next wave of abstract painters included Richard Diebenkorn (1922 – 1993). He, and his late-career decorative abstracts, would eventually take that leap without Matisse.