Analysis Of Vivid Color In Henri Matisse

Vivid color in Henri Matisse’s artworks Henri Matisse, one of modernist masters, is good at organizing color. When visiting to the museum, people are impressed by his abundant vivid color. Most of praises we’ve heard about him is “How can he painted like children”. Especially in his cut-outs, the artworks are filled of purity and simplicity. What is cut-outs? Matisse created cut-outs project in his last decade of life which called his second life. He used scissor to cut pre-colored sheets of papers and directed his assistant to pin them in the wall. Even though sometimes people might feel visual exhausted after whole day visited in the museum, his colorful artworks would emerge in mind quickly. All in all, it seems like the feature of Matisse’s

In traditional oil paintings, artists usually use dark shade or perspective to create space in canvas. Generally speaking, there are almost no dark shade in Matisse’s artworks. His artworks are almost light value and high in intensity. He boldly used high saturation color in shade. Also, he even didn’t obey the original color during creation. Take the oil painting, The Green Line, as an example, the author asserts that Matisse used cool color and warm color to depict the woman’s face instead of separating the face into a lighter and darker side. Matisse changed the local color by using a greenish-yellow shade in the woman’s left face. In the center of the portrait, there is a green line drew as a shadow of line in the woman’s face. Thus, Matisse arranged bright color on canvas to create three dimension in the painting and the flatness of rendering (144-146). Furthermore, in Matisse’s cut-outs projects, Neff notes that Matisse focused on arranging the placement of color in cut-outs. He emphasized that colorist must consider ‘relationships’ between color. Otherwise, single color doesn’t express meanings. Also, Matisse used color as ‘space’ in order to organize color accords (Neff 28-29). All in all, Matisse dealt with color in his visual journal, especially in bright color. He depicted shade by using bright color instead of darker color which represents his unique style in modernist

People almost agree that red expresses passion and blue expresses sorrow. There is no doubt that Matisse wanted to express pleasure to viewers by using vivid color in his artworks. For instance, Weston figures out The Rosier Chapel at Vence is also a masterpiece. Matisse used visual art to express the space and created whole aesthetic experience. It makes people fell the sense of joy, pleasure. It’s good for contemplation. Although some artists like Picasso couldn’t figure out why he had produced such a work, it was a glorious achievement (Weston 69-72). He used blue, green, and yellow in stained-glass windows of the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence. “The unity of this composition is generated by the careful interweaving of the three color ‘ The yellow is foreground, reality, and the blue and green are the space”. When people look at this sainted-glass window, with light illuminating those color, they feel serene and joyful. Furthermore, in his another artwork, Harmony in Red 1908, he used red and analogous red color in the image. It expresses passion and active to viewers. In the article, the author believes that Matisse was happy in that time. Since he just moved to Paris with his bride and children in 1908.Also he had his first triumphs as an artist (230). So the hues of this painting exactly reflect his emotion at that time. No wander people feel pleasure and enjoying when look at