
Matisse and the Subject of Modernism
Alastair Wright(Author)
Princeton University Press
Published on 22. January 2006
Book
Paperback/Softback
288 pages
978-0-691-11947-2 (ISBN)
Description
Focusing on the period 1905-1913, this provocative and groundbreaking new book refutes the popular view of Matisse as the painter of relaxed pleasures, the master of decorative line and sensuous color. Alastair Wright discovers a darker, more complex side to Matisse: an artist whose work, caught in the uneasy space between modernism and tradition, was fundamentally engaged with the most pressing of modernity's artistic and ideological debates. Presenting a series of brilliant and highly original analyses of Matisse's most important early paintings, Wright locates the artist within a wider cultural field in which the identities of modernism--and of its viewers--were highly contested. Wright offers a penetrating examination of the public response to Matisse's work, arguing that his early-twentieth-century audience found in his painting a deeply disturbing challenge to contemporary concepts of the self, of the nation, and of the West.
This sumptuously illustrated book positions the work of Matisse and a number of his contemporaries in relation to key aspects of modernity--the commodification of the individual, the dislocation of cultural identity, and the effacement of racial boundaries under the pressure of imperial expansion--and provides a compelling account of how these contradictory historical materials fused to give birth to Matisse's modernism. What emerges is a renewed sense of the rich complexity of an artistic practice suspended between the seductive potential of pure color and an always ambivalent engagement with tradition. Tracing the interplay between Matisse's painting and discourses of art and subjectivity, Wright offers a significant new reading of one of the central figures of early-twentieth-century modernism.
This sumptuously illustrated book positions the work of Matisse and a number of his contemporaries in relation to key aspects of modernity--the commodification of the individual, the dislocation of cultural identity, and the effacement of racial boundaries under the pressure of imperial expansion--and provides a compelling account of how these contradictory historical materials fused to give birth to Matisse's modernism. What emerges is a renewed sense of the rich complexity of an artistic practice suspended between the seductive potential of pure color and an always ambivalent engagement with tradition. Tracing the interplay between Matisse's painting and discourses of art and subjectivity, Wright offers a significant new reading of one of the central figures of early-twentieth-century modernism.
Reviews / Votes
"A book like Alastair Wright's Matisse and the Subject of Modernism is enough to rekindle my faith in the future of art history as a discipline... [I]t manages to cast entirely new light on Matisse's best-known works of the period from 1905-13."--Yve-Alain Bois, ArtForumMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
New Jersey
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
72 color plates. 55 halftones.
Dimensions
Height: 268 mm
Width: 216 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
Weight
1288 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-691-11947-2 (9780691119472)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Alastair Wright
Matisse and the Subject of Modernism
Book
02/2005
Princeton University Press
€80.60
Article exhausted; check different version
Person
Alastair Wright is Assistant Professor of Art History at Princeton University.
Content
Introduction: Between Moderism and Tradition 7 Part 1: Me Tis Chapter 1: Painting and the Ready-Made Pastiche at the 1905 Saklon des Independants 17 Chapter 2: "Trouble Retinien" Fauvism, Madness, and the Schizophrenic Eye 55 Part II: Metis Chapter 3: Modern(ist) Memories Le Bonheur de vivre and the Stimulus of Tradition 93 Chapter 4: Negative Dialectics Matisse and the decoratif at the 1910 Salon d'Autimne 131 Part III: Metisse Chapter 5: Miscegenations Nu bleu and the Collapsing of Difference 163 Chapter 6: Seeing Difference Looking Otherwise at marisse's Morocco 193 Conclusion 220 Notes 228 Acknowledgments 273 Bibliography 274 Index 282 Copyright and Photography Credits 288