Henri Matisse Research Paper

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse was famous for his unique movements and styles of art. He was best known as a Fauve painter, and was a large part of the modern art movement. He contributed to modern art, by keeping up with the artistic movements and trends, but also held on to the classical artistic styles of the past. While his work continued some of the stylitsic qualities of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, he was interested and involved, mostly, in Fauvism. He, like many other artists of this movement, emphasized strong colors over realistic and basic colors, found in Impressionism. One of his most famous pieces, The Dance (1909-1910) had two versions. The first piece, Dance I, resembled that of more classical styles of art, with its

He was known as one of the greatest colorists of the twentieth century, and a rival to other great artists of that time, in the importance of his innovations and creations. He emerged as a Post-Impressionist artist, and first achieved eminence as the leader of the French movement known as Fauvism.1 He was born in a place called Le Cateau-Cambresis, Nord, France, on December, 31st, 1869. He grew up in Bohain-en-Vermandois, Picardy, France, where his parents owned a flower shop. He was their first son and actually ended up disappointing his father, by becoming an artist.2 He really got into art in 1889, when his mother brought him art supplies after an appendicitis attack. And from then, he ended up loving it so much, he became one of the most influential artists of his time. He was different from other artists because he painted for himself, mostly. And while he was interested in many different artistic styles, from Cubism to Impressionism, he stuck to Fauvism, mainly. He was a sculptor, printmaker, and a draftsman, but mainly known as a

When painting The Dance (1910), he rendered the use of spatial ambiguity, found in a lot of modern paintings. This has been a key issue in the modern art style of painting, in general. In this painting, there is a sense of conflict between the illusion of depth and the acceptance of the flatness of the canvas. The final version, Dance II (1910), has a dramatic mood change because it was painted so differently than the first version. Besides the color shift, the figures of the 1910 Dance II canvas have harder interior lines. Those lines happen to suggest a feeling of tension and physical power.10 Not only this, but the figures are touching the ground more firmly and distinctly, and it has got more of a solid and clean-cut feel to it. It seems like it resembles the first version of the piece, Dance I, but is revamped and more adapted to the Fauve style and aesthetic. Fauvism is very distinct, and often times alarms the audience by being bold, bright and very matter-of-fact. In Dance II (1910), you will also notice the hands of the front two dancers are not connected; this could mean many things; this break in the circle was also demonstrated in the first version of this painting. A fair assessment would be that because those front dancers are closest to the audience, Matisse wanted you to feel like you could just jump in and join their dancing.