ACADÉMIE MATISSE
HENRI MATISSE AND HIS NORDIC & AMERICAN PUPILSOCTOBER 17 - NOVEMBER 17, 2001
Three Memoirs by Former Students
Jean Heiberg, Henrik Sørensen, and Max Weber
Jean Heiberg
In the winter of 1908 I arrived in Paris for the second time. I immediately stumbled upon the Steins' Matisse collection where receptions were held once a week. I was obviously moved, but more powerfully, at first, by the sculptures and the sketches, and it took a while before I was able to digest his paintings and see the clear logic of his color.
Henrik Sørensen Portrait of Jean Heiberg 1909
oil on canvas, 23¾ x 17¾ inches.
private collection, LillehammerWhen I heard that a group of Matisse's admirers (painters) had gotten together and made it possible for Matisse to be available to teach I was very anxious to be included. I gained an introduction through Hans Purrmann who was the "massier" and then I was accepted at the school. At the time, the school was located in an abandoned cloister in Rue de Sevres. Later, a more ideal atelier was established in the refectory in the Sacre-Coeur cloisters, 33 Boulevard des Invalides. The space was not so big and the students were few, maybe twelve, fifteen at most. There were Germans, Americans, Hungarians, and a Swede, Mr. Palme, who in fact was the first Scandinavian at the school.
In the short time the school had existed, before I was accepted, the first crisis had already happened. Mostly people brought big canvases that they 'attacked' as they thought Matisse would. But soon they were going to be cured of that though not without grinding teeth and tears. The canvases got smaller and smaller and finally they were replaced by paper.
I learned from the others' experience and to start with I stuck to drawing. Nevertheless, I could not avoid being given a hard time in the beginning. I had adapted to a drawing mannerism, a wavey line that was supposed to seem more sensative. Matisse immediately reacted to this and told me that "this way one could draw flames but not form". Until student numbers grew too large, he spent a lot of time with each student in the first year. He had a fantastic ability to identify the main issues in each of us. One heard unusually little about something being too short or too long and even though he engaged intensively in each student's particularities it was of interest to us all. Therefore the routine was that we all followed him on his round in the class and listened carefully to every word.
The school had, at Matisse's suggestion, aquired a copy of two antique sculptures from the Louvre, 'Mars' and an archaic sculpture, which he often used to demonstrate. Every now and then he got completely rid of the life model and we only drew from the plaster casts, and his critiques then were no less profitable.
He opened our eyes to architectural composition (construction), to mechanism, function and movement. Overall one can say that the basis of his teaching was classical.
If he was talking about color there were no preconditions in regard to color-view (a specific way of seeing color) or technique: "Tout les moyens sont bons" was one of his expressions. He let everybody do whatever he or she wanted to do. His instructions did not demand absolution, they depended on 'the relation'.It was nonsense to say that a single colour was beautiful or ugly- that only happened when the colour came together with one or two other colours. I remember once that he was fascinated by a study that Sigrid Hjertén had painted. Her colour was at the time as far from Matisse's own color as one could imagine. It would be great fun to see this study again.
He often stressed the colours intrinsic value or function, independent of the nuanced value, whose basis is on a scale from black to white. This is not to say that tonal values were taboo, but it was definately an either-or.
As an example of value painting he menioned Corot, who he greatly admired.The last year the school existed on Boulevard des Invalides Matisse only taught sculpture. Even though the principles were the same as for painting it was through this other art form (sculpture) that one engaged with these issues. Free from concern with painterly effects, all emphasis was on pure and full form, on the distribution of masses and balance.
The model was not placed on any turntable. Matisse disliked the usual method of checking the silhouettes again and again. Matisse claimed that by doing it his way one could get a better hold of the form. One had to walk around the model oneself trying to conceptualize and clarify how the forms connect. Once I was told to turn my back to the model whilst I was working at my sculpture stand so that I could get used to creating an order in my understanding, before I started the actual execution. The road through the brain.
Translated by Torild Stray
from Leo Swane Matisse Oslo 1950
Henrik SørensenI came from the charming and paradoxical school of Zahrtmann's in Copenhagen, all filled with fog and perplexity.
It was Jean Heiberg who discovered Matisse and he arranged things so that I got a place at the head of the line. Matisse had his studio and his school in the refectory in the old cloister at 33 Boulevard des Invalides. The large room was austerely equipped, as one would expect. There were grey walls, a big cast of a Greek male nude and some photographs from the Cathedral in Chartres. The sharp harsh light in this room created no painterly effect whatsoever. It was like a laboratory.
The place was crowded with all sorts of painters, both men and women, from all the corners of the world: crazy gumchewing Americans whose paintings were so square, nobody from Rule Brittania, naturally, but two very lovely Frenchmen, earnest Germans- most of them from Rhineland - some smiling Austrians, violent painting Russians- and then, from the center of the universe, us Norwegians and Swedes. At that time the Danish painting traditions prevented Danes from coming to Paris. A wonderful assembly of disparate people.
Of the later famous Matisse boys, the father figure was Jean Heiberg, a natural leader. He was a rock, terribly strict - almost orthodox - because he was the one who understood "le maître" and French best of all.
Every weekend Matisse came and put things in their right place. When he was finished, most of his class was "finished" too! Various Balkan representatives sat and quietly sobbed, others reacted with floods of tears. The Scandinavians coped best. Matisse later said they were his prize students.
"Le maître" looked like a clever math teacher, and I can assure you that he straightened us out in our terminology and established clarity for us.
He placed the "soul" carefully in the corner and delivered the most exact instructions for "la peinture exact et sans histoire". In particular he stressed color, with its "rapports", nuances ("les petites differances") and contrasts. He gave us the sense of color as a means of creating depth, distance and motion in the picture. With patient exactitude he explained to us, over and again, the principles of the Ancients regarding convexity in form, how the human body has set points, how the joints have meaning, how there are patterns of movement in a figure. And in the final analysis, there are the model's individual characteristics. These rules, he stressed, were passed down from his own great teachers, through Gustave Moreau, and back to Raphael, Leonardo and the Greeks.
He was ruthless with anyone whose pictures were "Matisse-ized". He would pose the tricky question, "Why are you looking and painting this way?" Most of us did not know what to answer. I suppose one should have answered: "Because Matisse paints that way." It was a time, historically, when head-strong opinions were competing like pure color and black contours on a canvas, with ochre, English red, and deep Chinese trying to keep the peace.
If one came out of all this relatively in one piece off one went to the Louvre feeling blessed and sure of knowing everything.
The golden key had been discovered. The long way to Mount Helikon was started, the constantly unattainable summit one blesses all the more the harder it gets. I remain deeply indebted to both Matisse and France.
Translated by Torild Stray
from Leo Swane Matisse Oslo 1950Max Weber
… From time to time, during 1907, I painted from the model in a life class of the Colarossi Academy, but I did not take criticism from the visiting professor. In that atelier there was another young painter from Berlin who did likewise. In the course of conversation with Hans Purrmann, who was a very close friend of Matisse, he suggested that we might be able to organize a class of our own, under the tutelage of Matisse. He felt quite certain that he could persuade Matisse to give us criticism. Our dream was realized. Matisse graciously agreed to give us and a few other serious students criticism every Thursday morning. Although he lived in modest circumstances, he would not accept any remuneration for the precious time and energy he gave us-a spirit now almost extinct.
Fortunate as we were, we had two more difficult problems yet to solve-finding an appropriate atelier, and a few more sympathetic and serious students to help pay the rent, hire models, purchase easels, a stove and studio accessories. I went to the American Art Club on the rue Vavin, corner of the rue de la Grande Chaumière, in the hope of finding American art students to join the class, but my mission was in vain. They would not hear of it, and I was even ridiculed for making such efforts. However, we were not discouraged. Leo Stein and his sister-in-law, Sarah, Mike Stein's wife, who were among the first few patrons of Matisse, joined the class. A very close friend and classmate of Matisse in the Gustave Moreau class also joined, as did an American painter, Patrick Bruce, from Virginia, Mr. And Mrs. Moll from Berlin, and Fräulein Von Knierim from Hambrrg, and Fräulein Devard from Holland. By now we had a class of about ten students, and we were able to bridge over our economic difficulties. We were even able to purchase a life-sized cast of one of the finest Greek Apollos of the fifth century, which Matisse recommended and strongly advised us to study. There were weeks when the living model was suspended, and our entire time was given up to drawing and even painting from this exquisite plaster cast.
The Matisse class was founded on the first of January 1908, in the Couvent des Oiseaux. The atelier was a large, well-lit room, flooded with light from three large French windows. We also had the use of the beautiful and spacious gardens of this vacated monastery, where we painted from the draped model as soon as spring came.
I shall never forget the first Thursday of the first week of the class. The atmosphere of the first three days before Matisse's first visit was tense with anticipation and fear, but with deep inner joy and pride as well, for we felt that a rising master was coming to bring us light and lead us out of chaos towards the right path of a veritable renaissance. With the passing of the weeks and months, our trials and errors increased, but our expectations were more that fulfilled. Our gratitude and enthusiasm were bountiful.
Matisse's criticism was generous and very searching, at times very severe and admonishing, but always constructive, enlightening and sympathetic. His warm interest in our technical problems and difficulties gave us confidence and courage. He abhorred technical bravura or superficial calligraphic flourish. He encouraged experimentation, but cautioned us of the subtle inroads and dangers of capricious violence, exaggerations and dubious emphasis. He insisted upon good logical construction of the figure, and did not disapprove of the study of anatomy or the use of the plumb line. In calling our attention to the salient points in the human body, its movements, volume, sculpturesque content and equilibrium, he would refer to the African Negro sculpture, the great archaic Greece of the fourth and fifth centuries B.C., and unfailingly to Cezanne's architectonic, masonic plasticity. His unique vision and unexcelled meticulous execution, spiritual values, poetic nuance and significant gesture were sought, no less than the plastic attributes and values.
Great stress was laid upon the problems of color values and harmonies, color construction and gradation. Matisse cautioned against violent, discordant pigmentation. "Good color sings," he would say. " It is melodious, aroma-like, never over-baked." And he preferred good local color to garish, illogical, chromatic transposition of local color. Scientific theories of color by Chevreul, Helmholtz, and our own Ogden N. Rood were discussed. In this connection, the origin and theory of Pointillism, Impressionism was explained to us, and what influences the basic principles of design and color in the great ancient arabesque of Far Eastern art-Chinese, Persian and Hindu - had upon Western art.
Matisse abstained form demonstration or making corrections on students' work He felt that that was too involving and deprived some students of their weekly individual criticism. Now and then, he advised us to take account of ourselves, of our efforts and experiments, so as not to lose time in wrong directions. At the same time, however, he advised us to strive for things we were not yet able to do, rather that to go on repeating our modest "successes." In spite of the iconoclastic spirit and enthusiasm of the class, nevertheless Matisse would call our attention to the wise, ancient dictum, " There's nothing new under the sun." He revered the great art legacies and traditions, and advised us to study the ancients, but cautioned us not to become enslaved by their productive and overpowering influences.
Discussing the principles of composition in the class one day, it occurred to us that we would benefit greatly by bringing in compositions for criticism by Matisse. The first week, I was the only one who brought in a composition, which was discussed and criticized for the benefit of the class and myself. The second week, I was again the only one who brought in a composition, and again my composition was criticized, and I was very embarrassed in the presence of the class. There and then I decide not to serve as a guinea pig for the class. The following week, no one brought in a composition, and that was the end of the composition project. But I kept up the practice by myself. Instead of original compositions, however, we brought in reproductions of great art examples. These were discussed and analyzed during the model's rest periods. Matisse took part in these discussions and warned us repeatedly to guard against being submerged by them.
… As a counterpoint and enhancement of the workaday spirit of the class there were occasional visits to Matisse's studio in another part of the Couvent des Oiseaux. During those veritably festive afternoon hours, he showed us many of his early drawings and paintings, and spoke freely and intimately about them, explaining the various directions and tendencies. Along with his own work, he showed us with great pride and loving care examples of the work of his colleagues. I remember very distinctly the figure drawings in sanguine by Maillol, and black and whites by Rouault, and four large ink drawings by Van Gogh. With great modesty and deep inner pride, he showed us his painting Bathers by Cezanne. His silence before it was more evocative and eloquent than works. A spirit of elation and awe pervaded the studio at such times.
Matisse was very proud of his small but very choice collection of African Negro sculpture, and this was before Negro sculpture overwhelmed, if not conquered, the art of the continent. He would take a figurine in his hands, and point out to us the authentic and instinctive sculpturesque qualities, such as the marvelous workmanship, the unique sense of proportion, the supple palpitating fullness of form and equilibrium in them.Extracted from a lecture delivered at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 22 October 1951, by kind permission of the Estate of Max Weber
FURTHER READING:
Introduction to Academie Matisse
Biographical information on artists in the exhibition
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