The adventures, mysteries and many lives of a Matisse masterpiece
Created in 1911, Henri Matisse’s The Red Studio would go on to become one of the most influential works in the history of modern art. The painting, which has hung in MoMA’s galleries since 1949, depicts the artist’s studio in the Parisian suburb of Issy-les-Moulineaux, filled with his own artworks, furniture and decorative objects. Matisse’s radical decision to saturate the work’s surface with red has fascinated generations of scholars and artists, yet much remained to be discovered about the painting’s genesis and history. Published in conjunction with an exhibition that reunites the artworks shown in The Red Studio for the first time since they left Matisse’s work space, this copiously illustrated catalog examines the paintings and sculptures depicted in it, from familiar works such as Young Sailor II (1906) to lesser-known pieces whose locations have only recently been discovered. A narrative essay by Ann Temkin, the Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Dorthe Aagesen, Chief Curator and Senior Researcher at Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, traces the life of The Red Studio, from the initial commissioning of the work in 1911 through its early history of exhibition and ownership to its arrival at MoMA after World War II. The book features a rich selection of archival materials, including photographs, letters and ephemera, many of which have never before been published or exhibited. With its groundbreaking research and close reading of the work, Matisse: The Red Studio transforms our understanding of this landmark of 20th-century art.
"Young Sailor II" (1906) is reproduced from 'Matisse: The Red Studio'.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
New York Times: Arts
Roberta Smith
A meticulous examination of the inner and outer life of a single painting.
New York Magazine: Vulture
Jerry Saltz
We see how, in an incredibly condensed period of time, an artist can traverse universes and touch down in places unexpected. We witness an artist not only inventing and reinventing himself but reinventing art history as he does so. In these little spaces, you can almost hear these mighty engines roar.
New Yorker
Peter Schjeldahl
Aesthetic bliss saturates—radically, to a degree still apt to startle when you pause to reflect on it—the means, ends, and very soul of a style that was so far ahead of its time that its full influence took decades to kick in.
Washington Examiner
Daniel Ross Goodman
The Red Studio has the effect of making Matisse’s world less abstract…Allows us to enter not only the artist’s studio but also the life and mind of the artist
Washington Post
Sebastian Smee
The optical-sensuous equivalent of a five-alarm fire.
ARTnews
Howard Halle
A tale that’s no less fascinating than the painting itself
Hyperallergic
David Carrier
Looking Anew at a Strange Matisse Masterpiece... In 1911 Matisse created “The Red Studio,” a self-enclosed world in his studio, by showing 11 earlier works of art, without the presence of the artist.
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Henri Matisse’s Le Luxe II (1907–08) is reproduced from Matisse: The Red Studio, published to accompany the landmark exhibition on view now at MoMA, which reunites for the first time all of the artworks depicted in the artist’s famous 1911 painting of the interior of his suburban studio just outside Paris. Le Luxe (II) appears in the upper right corner of the painting. “Le Luxe (II) is the second of a pair of paintings of the same subject, in which the modulated tonalities and visible brushstrokes of its predecessor are translated into flat planes of simple color,” Ann Temkin and Dorthe Aagesen write. “For the second version of Le Luxe, Matisse shifted his medium from oil to distemper, which produces a thin and even matte surface. The rendition of Le Luxe (II) in The Red Studio, on the other hand, is heavily worked, with visible brushstrokes and layering of paint. It also represents the most dramatic color shift from the painting on which it is modeled: Matisse has transformed the pale skin of the three nudes, rendering it in the same red as the studio itself, with the result that the painting appears more “in” than “on” the red wall. The change recasts the women as dark-skinned, at a moment in which avant-garde art was raising charged questions around concepts of racial difference and European ideals of beauty. The red-brown earth of Le Luxe (II) has become a rich ocher, and the other colors of the landscape are accordingly intense, the water a deeper green and the sky a darker blue than in the original painting.” continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 9 x 10.5 in. / 224 pgs / 200 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $55.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $75 ISBN: 9781633451322 PUBLISHER: The Museum of Modern Art, New York AVAILABLE: 5/31/2022 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA ONLY
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. By Ann Temkin, Dorthe Aagesen.
The adventures, mysteries and many lives of a Matisse masterpiece
Created in 1911, Henri Matisse’s The Red Studio would go on to become one of the most influential works in the history of modern art. The painting, which has hung in MoMA’s galleries since 1949, depicts the artist’s studio in the Parisian suburb of Issy-les-Moulineaux, filled with his own artworks, furniture and decorative objects. Matisse’s radical decision to saturate the work’s surface with red has fascinated generations of scholars and artists, yet much remained to be discovered about the painting’s genesis and history.
Published in conjunction with an exhibition that reunites the artworks shown in The Red Studio for the first time since they left Matisse’s work space, this copiously illustrated catalog examines the paintings and sculptures depicted in it, from familiar works such as Young Sailor II (1906) to lesser-known pieces whose locations have only recently been discovered. A narrative essay by Ann Temkin, the Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Dorthe Aagesen, Chief Curator and Senior Researcher at Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, traces the life of The Red Studio, from the initial commissioning of the work in 1911 through its early history of exhibition and ownership to its arrival at MoMA after World War II. The book features a rich selection of archival materials, including photographs, letters and ephemera, many of which have never before been published or exhibited. With its groundbreaking research and close reading of the work, Matisse: The Red Studio transforms our understanding of this landmark of 20th-century art.
