From Museum to Your Neighborhood Theater: Matisse, Rembrandt, Vincent van Gogh, and Turner
This has been a banner year for mainstream movies and documentaries about art, artists, and the act of creating. And I have been in the 4th row of Pig Heaven watching every one of these offerings at my local movie house. So far, we have had some half dozen mainstream offerings: from Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner; Frederick Wiseman’s National Gallery; Tim Burton’s Big Eyes, the story of painter Margaret Keane and her alleged sociopathic husband, Walter; to Julian Jones’ 3D, Inside the Mind of Leonardo. And now, thanks to Fathom Events, in association with Arts Alliance and uber producer/director Phil Grabsky, and his company Seventh Arts Productions, five more art and artist documentaries are on their way to the big screen.
Above: Museum staff hang one of Matisse’s late-in-life florals for the Tate/MoMA ‘Cut-Outs show xxxxxx
First, at a theatre near you will be, Matisse from MoMA and Tate Modern, with one showing only on January 13th. It was screened at a press preview at the Museum of Modern Art, and simply put, it was to die for. Following the film was a Q & A—moderated by Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York magazine’s film writer—with the film’s director Phil Grabsky, and two of MoMA’s curators, Karl Buchberg (he is also MoMA’s senior conservator), and Jodi Hauptman. Much light was shed on the trials, tribulations, as well as the great pleasures encountered in making the Matisse documentary, documentaries in general, as well as the mounting of MoMA’s current exhibition, Matisse: The Cut-Outs, running through February 10, 2015.
All Phil Grabsky’s films from this series are tailored to an individual exhibition, including extensive gallery footage, long-views, lovingly lingering close-ups, and details of art works. Interspersed in the narrative are rare archival materials, footage of the works being installed, scenes at various locations, and interviews with museum directors (in Matisse’s case, Tate Modern’s Nick Serota and MoMA’s Glenn Lowry), exhibition curators, art historians, and scholars, among others.
Left: Lydia Delectorskaya, muse and model shown here with Matisse in the 1940s.
In the Matisse film, we are gifted with interviews with artist Sophie Matisse, the artist’s great grand-daughter, 92 year old Françoise Gilot, Picasso’s muse, ex-lover and the mother of Claude and Paloma Picasso. Also interviewed was Lydia Delectorskaya, one of Matisse’s studio assistants (formerly one of his models), who vividly recalls how, in 1952, the 83-year-old artist revised his Blue Nudes again and again. “Each on a different day, they had been cut in one line, with one stroke of the scissor, in 10 minutes, or 15 at the maximum.”
While the documentary offers a short history of the artist’s long life—from his birth (1869) to his death from a heart attack at age 84 in 1954—the film focuses principally on the struggles and glories of the last ten years of his life. In 1941, Matisse underwent surgery in which a colostomy was performed. While his operation, physically speaking, radically changed his lifestyle, it also gave him a new lease in life, and a tremendous surge of creative energy took hold. Being so close to death, the artist felt a new urgency.
Following the operation, Matisse relied on a wheelchair, frequently taking to his bed, from which he worked. Until his death, he continued to be cared for by Russian model and muse, Lydia Delectorskaya. With the aid of assistants he set about creating cut paper collages—gouaches découpé—often on a large scale. His Blue Nudes series feature prime examples of this technique, one he called “painting with scissors.” These works demonstrate his ability to bring an eye for color and geometry to a new medium of utter simplicity, but with playful and delightful power.
In the film, reverential attention was paid (and beautifully, I might add), to what Matisse felt was his crowning glory, the interior design, glass windows and decorations, of the Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence, often referred to as the Matisse Chapel (below, left). This project was the result of the close friendship between Matisse and Bourgeois, now, Sister Jacques-Marie. As a student nurse, she cared for him after his operation. Despite being an atheist, the artist and his care-giver later met again in Vence, entering a collaboration which resulted in the chapel installation. This story is related in her 1992 book Henri Matisse: La Chapelle de Vence, and in the 2003 documentary, “A Model for Matisse.”
Equally compelling is the film’s focus on another Matisse masterpiece, The Swimming Pool. This was the artist’s only site-specific cut-out. The film also includes a behind the scene segment in which curator, Buchberg, discusses his multi-year long effort in conserving The Swimming Pool. This ensemble is considered the culmination of Matisse’s cut-out work, its forms reduced to elemental simplicity, the tension of positive and negative spaces taking to a new edge.
Right: ‘The Swimming Pool’ at Hôtel Régina, Nice (1953) Photo: Hélène Adant. Centre Pompidou – MnamCci – Bibliothèque Kandinsky.
As the story goes, one fine summer morning in 1952 Matisse and Lydia Delectorskaya set out to a public pool in Cannes, because “he wanted to see divers.” But searing heat drove them back home, where Matisse declared, “I will make myself my own pool.” He directed Delectorskaya to attach a wide strip of white paper around the burlap-coated walls of his dining room at the Hôtel Régina in Nice, at a height just above Matisse’s head while standing. Matisse then proceeded to cut his divers, swimmers and sea creatures from paper painted ultramarine blue, pinning them onto white paper, where they took on a splashing and dancing life of their own.
Below: ‘The Swimming Pool’ installed at MoMA for a 1992-93 exhibition.
Actor, Rupert Young, best known for portrayal of Sir Leon, in the BBC drama series Merlin, is the main narrator of the film. But, it is the compelling narration of acclaimed English actor Simon Russell Beale, whose eloquent voice treats the listener to numerous quotes culled from the artist’s interviews and writings. Among them:
I don’t know whether I believe in God or not. I think, really, I’m some sort of Buddhist. But the essential thing is to put oneself in a frame of mind which is close to that of prayer.
Cutting into color reminds me of the sculptor’s direct carving.
From the moment I held the box of colors in my hands, I knew this was my life. I threw myself into it like a beast that plunges towards the thing it loves.
It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.
A work of art must carry in itself its complete significance and impose it upon the beholder even before he can identify the subject-matter.
Time extracts various values from a painter’s work. When these values are exhausted the pictures are forgotten, and the more a picture has to give, the greater it is.
Working with the Tate, film-maker, Grabsky also chose to include an original dance performance and jazz piece by Courtney Pine, responding to Matisse’s cut-outs. The dance, performed by Zenaida Yanowsky, a principal with the Royal Ballet, is breathtakingly gorgeous. She performs dressed in signature Matisse colors against a white ‘infinity’ background. Multiple, overlapping exposures present her in various colored leotards, appearing as many dancers moving through space together. In the film, Jodi Hauptman speaks about The Red Studio, and how it represents many of Matisse’s lifelong motifs, including a vase and plant with curving lines creating an ‘arabesque.’
Left: Henri Matisse, ‘The Red Studio,’ Issy-les-Moulineaux, fall 1911, oil on canvas, 71 ¼ x 72 ¼” © 2015 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Following in Matisse’s documentary footsteps, soon at selected theaters around the U.S., will be single-night screenings of Rembrandt: The Late Works from the National Gallery and the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam (February 24), Vincent van Gogh: A New Way of Seeing from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam (April 14), Girl With a Pearl Earring and Other treasures from the Mauritshuis in the Hague (June 23), and the Impressionists from the Musée du Luxembourg Paris, National Gallery London and Philadelphia Museum of Art (July 14). Again, each film will be shown one time only.
Tickets for Matisse, and for any of the five, “one showing only” films from “Exhibitions on Screen” series can be purchased online at www.FathomEvents.com or at participating theater box offices.
Producer/director Grabsky’s concept is to make major international shows available to audiences around the world. Accessibility is the core element of these “exhibitions on screen.” The documentaries are not meant to replace the museum experience. However, once you’ve seen the show, you may want to supplement your understanding by taking in the exhibition itself, learning more of the artist’s work, his life and time.
Right: Producer/director Phil Grabsky discusses his project in this video still from an interview available on link below.
In the meanwhile, before I sign off, let me tout two extraordinary “must see” films: Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner and Frederick Wiseman’s Nationally Gallery. For three glorious hours I wallowed—wonderfully so—watching Leigh’s highly atmospheric and totally mesmerizing Mr. Turner. It relates the story, touchingly so in seemingly real time, of the last years of the great British painter J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851). He remains, in my mind, unarguably England’s most important painter.
The same with Wiseman’s breathtaking documentary, National Gallery, offering a mesmerizing three-hour, eye-opening tour of this London museum, housing one of the world’s greatest collections of European paintings. Here, again, I was thrilled to listen to the people who work at the National Gallery. I found that hearing their heartfelt thoughts, feelings, and ideas—from the museum’s director, Nicholas Penny, to the museum’s janitors, all of who are living their live among the museum’s art—a testament to what is divine in art.
Left: Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954)
All the while, as I listened to these orators wax eloquently as to how art has both enlarged and enriched their lives, I couldn’t help but think of Matisse’s words uttered shortly before he died “All art worthy of the name is religious. Be it a creation of lines, or colors: if it is not religious, it does not exist. If it is not religious, it is only a matter of documentary art, anecdotal art…which is no longer art.”
How true! If only everybody realized this.
By Edward Rubin, Contributing Editor
Following are three links to the Matisse documentary: a trailer; a behind the scene look at Karl Buchberg discussing the conservation of Matisse’s The Swimming Pool; and a short interview with Director Phil Grabsky, explaining why a cinema experience of an art exhibition is not only for people that cannot visit the exhibition themselves, but also for those lucky enough to see the exhibition and want to deepen their appreciation with a return ‘visit.’
Right: ‘Blue Nude II’ (spring, 1952), Henri Matisse © 2014 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Matisse Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiTqrWgUdHY
The Swimming Pool: http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2014/10/07/the-conservation-of-henri-matisses-the-swimming-pool/
Phil Grabsky Interview: http://www.exhibitiononscreen.com/interview-with-phil-grabsky
Matisse tickets, as well as other up and coming art films from the “Exhibition Series,” can be purchased at http://www.fathomevents.com/event/matisse Tickets are also available through participating theater box offices.
Tatyana Stepanova
January 13, 2015 @ 12:31 pm
Was absorbing your article like a sponge… Thank you for collecting all this nourishing material for us
Love Matisse and love you
Tatyana
Elaine A. King
January 14, 2015 @ 2:11 pm
Edward,
Thank you for a compelling and informative article. Passionate, clear writing–a welcomed relief in an age of gibberish! Bravo! I look forward to more of your essays,
EAK