What to do on the French Riviera: Matisse in his Workshop

As part of the exhibition "Matisse 1930s. Through Cahiers d'Art", the Orangerie Museum and the Matisse Museum in Nice are organizing two days of complementary studies which explore in two parts the issues at the heart of this period. of creation. At the Matisse museum, the invited international researchers will look into the question of Matisse's studio in the 1930s: laboratory, place of life, working environment, as well as a conceptual space which accommodates the Matissian creative gesture.

PROGRAM:

9:30 a.m.: The work in the making: state photographs, description and stakes of a founding procedure> Claudine Grammont, head of the graphic arts office at the Center Pompidou and curator of the "Matisse years 1930" exhibition at the Matisse Nice museum t was during the creation of his large mural decoration of La Danse for the Barnes Foundation that Matisse began to have his work in progress photographed. What was initially only a work tool for the painter becomes during these three years a decisive process in the realization of the work. We will show how state drawings and photographs belong to the process of gestation of a work whose development works on the principle of metamorphosis. Subsequently, state photography becomes a more systematic process that accompanies paintings and drawings whose realization unfolds over time, what Matisse calls "paintings of experience". It will be a question of better understanding the practical modalities as well as the aesthetic stakes of such a method that Matisse made his own during the 1930s.

10 a.m.: Nymph in the forest (La Verdure), work-laboratory by Matisse in the studio> Gaku Condo (videoconference), art historian and independent researcherNymph in the forest (La Verdure) is undoubtedly the work of Matisse that remained in the studio of its author the longest (1935-1943). During his long "stay", the large paintingvaguely mythological maintained complex relationships with other works in the same space and beyond. This communication will attempt to unravel some of this tanglecomplex, beginning by examining the emblematic photographs of the painter working on this work in his studio in Cimiez, taken during the summer of 1941 by the journalistAmerican Varian Fry.

10:30 a.m.: The odyssey of shapes: from object to work> Hélène Ivanoff, associate researcher at EHESSThe intervention will focus mainly on Oceanian and African art objects from Matisse's personal collection, constituting his "working library", now kept in theMatisse Museum in Nice. More than a "pallet of objects" in which Henri Matisse would have come to draw new shapes and colors from the outside which he would have duplicated on paper, the objects with which he liked to surround himself were an integral part of his creative processes. . Their motifs were constantly transposed and reworked at each stage of the execution of his works. It is the odyssey of these forms, from the object to the work, that is presented here, in order to get closer to the creative impulse of Henri Matisse and the slow metamorphosis of the object into a sign.

11 a.m.: The socio-cultural context in Nice in the 1930s> Aymeric Jeudy, acting director of the Musée Matisse NiceIf Matisse was never the painter of Nice, the city, and particularly that of the 1930s, offered him a "breath of the vast world" as Aragon wrote, where, in the heart of a cosmopolitan city-decor, he lived, created and nurtured intense research. in the throes of the 1930s. Americanized, hedonistic and full of tropical exoticism.It is in this universe in total mutation that he finds many models, frequents writers, gallery owners, collectors, musicians or choreographers and becomes a major figure of theinternational modernism. The study of the artist's diaries in particular makes it possible to understand the richness of the links uniting him to this geographical space lived and dreamed of, an expression of the eternal Mediterranean.Discussion
Lunch 12 p.m./12:30 p.m. > 2 p.m.
2 p.m.: Said and unsaid around La Danse> Anne Théry, researcher, lecturer, Archives Henri MatisseThere is something paradoxical about the making of La Danse: even though Matisse was experimenting with the technique of cut-out gouache in this context, he says nothing, or almost. If the artist expresses himself, with a certain ease, with his family on the impasse in which he finds himself to face this commission, the question of the means of supporting it - which Matisse begins to put in place around September 1931 - still remains in the state of confidence that should not be leaked. Between said and unsaid, it will be a question of considering the way in which Matisse, in his writings and remarks of the early 1930s, seeks an adequate discourse to speak of LaDanse, and in doing so, to rearticulate creation to its criticism.2:30 p.m.: Dance, from studio to stage> Matthew Affron, The Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art,Philadelphia Museum of ArtThe La Danse wall decoration, installed at the Barnes Foundation, served as the starting point for Matisse's work in the 1930s. of La Danse in the sets he designed for the Rouge et Noir ballet, in collaboration with Léonide Massine and the company of the Ballets Russes de Monte-Carlo.

• 3:30 p.m.: Erasing work: Lydia Delectorskaya and Matisse's creative process > Ellen McBreen, professor and co-chair of the Department of Art History at Wheaton College (Massachusetts), independent curator

Often celebrated as Matisse's devoted secretary and muse, Lydia Delectorskaya was instrumental in his studio as an assistant from 1932 to 1954. Based on first-hand accounts, interviews and other archival material, this conference will focus on distinguishing Delectorskaya's tasks in the studio from the fictional narratives evoked by the works in which she takes on the role of model. It will be a question of better understanding the multiple roles that it played while also returning to the historical reasons for their erasure. Matisse and Delectorskaya were engaged in a unique creative collaboration, shaped by differences of class, power, nationality and gender. We will rely on Delectorskaya's words to try to grasp its complexities.