The Modern Masters exhibition where Henri Matisse’s work is displayed in the Usher Gallery has numerous nude sketches and sketches of a particular young woman called Antoinette Arnoud. I have decided to create my text from the perspective of the women that modelled for Matisse and whose bodies have been sketched and are exhibited in the gallery.
Matisse was transfixed with the female body; ‘What interests me most is neither still life nor landscape but the human figure.’ (Modern Masters, 2014). I have decided to portray the women in the artwork to not be positive and speak highly of Matisse as it is the expected. I want the responses to appear unstructured and as though they are their true feelings and also some sections that appear very authoritative as though they have strong opionions upon modelling for Matisse.
One of the descriptions the Usher gallery have written about the sketch Little Aurora; a nude sketch is; ‘Trust and familiarity were key to Matisse successful collaboration with his models. He observed that an artist should possess almost total kinship with his muse.’ (Saunders, 2014). This suggests the kind of relationship Matisse had with his models and I intend on researching further into this relationship Maitsse had with the models and in particular Antoinette Arnoud who appears numerous times. I hope to convey in my performative text the reflections and responses to his art and the way women are portrayed in art along with the personal reflectons from the models experiences with Matisse.
Margaret Whitford quoted Luce Irigaray stating,
‘A person who is in a position of mastery does not let go of it easily, does not even imagine any other position which would already amount to ‘getting out of it.’ In other words the masculine is not prepared to share the initiative of discourse. It prefers to experiment with speaking, writing, enjoying ‘woman’ rather than leaving to that, other any right to intervene to ‘act’ in her own interest.’ (Whitford, 1991).
‘I think that one of the gestures that we have to make today, from the point of view of thought, is to refuse absolutely the opposition theory/fiction, refuse the opposition truth/art because it is hierarchial oppositions which is absolutely decisive for the establishment of metaphysics. (Whiteford, 1991).
After researching Irigaray’s perspective upon art and literacture of women, she deconstructs the responses and messages that are illustrated. I am going to use quotes from Irigaray and connect them with the reflections I will write from the models point of view towards how Matisse exploits the human figure and makes it an object.
Works Cited
Saunders, Gill, 2014, Modern Masters exhibition, January 2014-30th March 2014, Lincoln, The Usher Gallery.
The Usher Gallery, 2014, Modern Masters exhibition January 2014-30th March 2014, Lincoln: The Usher Gallery.
Whitford, Margaret, 1991, Luce Irigaray: Philosophy in Feminism, London, Routledge.