Matisse's Poets

Reviews / Votes

This beautiful book will become both a reference work on Matisse's works and a reflection on the critical function of the dialogue of images and text. * French Studies (Bloomsbury Translation) * It is [...] extremely rare to find a scholar able to move so expertly between literary and visual analysis, and this remains a tremendously impressive and useful contribution to scholarship on Matisse and his literary and artistic networks, on bibliophile culture, and on text-image relationships. * caa.reviews * Kathryn Brown here explores all aspects of Matisse's achievements as a book artist, showing how his engagement with writers became a driving force in his aesthetic development. Moving between visual and literary imperatives, she also provides an informed and subtle presentation of the historical context in which Matisse was working, further enriching our appreciation of the books he designed, particularly during and after the second World War, when he combined drawings, cut-outs and poetry to express a spirit of resolute resistance and resilient cultural identity. * Peter Read, Professor of Modern French Literature and Visual Arts, University of Kent, UK * Henri Matisse hails from the distinctly French tradition of the painter-poet whose creative output (as well as personal and professional life) was inextricably linked with literature and writers. In Kathryn Brown's clear-eyed and discerning study Matisse's Poets, the artist's collaborative book ventures serve as a fascinating lens through which to examine Matisse's relationship to literature and writers. Using the metaphor of the stage, Brown defines Matisse's artists' books as an effective space where the painter could perform his role not only as illustrator but also as reader, critic, and artist acutely aware of his public image. As such, each chapter in this well-researched and amply illustrated study shows how Matisse self-consciously engaged with literary works by authors as diverse as Stephane Mallarme, Henry de Montherlant, Charles Baudelaire, Pierre de Ronsard, James Joyce, Tristan Tzara, among others, to produce and extend his own pictorial language as well as to position himself as a sophisticated reader of both the literary canon and the avant-garde. Brown therefore rightly places Matisse's artists' books within a broad matrix of concerns that allows her to go beyond conventional text-image analyses to include the social and political valences of Matisse's creative and strategic decisions in his diverse publishing projects. The interdisciplinary framework of Matisse's Poets will attract literary critics as well as art historians and scholars of media and book history. Its lucid prose and finely tuned arguments will make it a useful tool for teaching as well as scholarly research. * Anna Sigridur Arnar, Professor of Art History, Minnesota State University Moorhead, USA * This is a remarkable book ... [with] a wide range of new aspects and dimensions. * Leonardo Reviews *