Original subtitles

(DRAMATIC ORCHESTRAL MUSIC)

March 1930 -

Henri Matisse sails to Polynesia

for what will be the final great voyage of his life.

He departed without a return ticket

and no hotel reservation in Tahiti.

He has left just like that,

absolutely alone,

even leaving behind an unfinished canvas

sitting on an easel in his studio.

At 60, Matisse, the undisputed master of modern painting,

is at the height of his fame and has nothing more to prove.

But what is he in search of?

He, whom art history has largely depicted in images

either as a studio painter in white overalls

or an aging artist working from his bed,

always had the soul of a traveller.

Numerous voyages marked the critical moments of his life,

and became an essential driving force in his work.

"I have always been aware of another sphere,

in which the objects of my reverie evolve.

And I have always been taken by light and its poetry.

The reverie of a man who has travelled

is far richer than that of a man who has never travelled."

(BIRD CHIRPS)

Matisse is from the North of France,

born not far from the border with Belgium.

"I was born on the 31st December, 1869,

at my grandmother's home at Cateau-Cambresis.

My father was settled a few miles away at Bohain,

where he was a seed merchant.

I was not interested in anything.

I was very indifferent to everything they wanted me to do.

I begged my parents for permission to go to Paris

to study painting seriously.

I went to the Julian Academy

and was enrolled at the School of Fine Arts.

I spent my days at the Louvre,

following my own attractions.

I studied the masters,

much like in literature we study the authors.

I went from a Dutch artist to a Chardin.

But I was made to copy slavishly and unintelligently.

While I was at the School of Fine Arts,

I was staying on the Quai Saint-Michel,

and the painter Wery lived next door.

One summer, we went to Belle-Ile-en-Mer.

(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)

My first trip was to Brittany.

This was the first stage in my evolution.

We stayed on the Cote Sauvage.

Matisse had learnt to paint

respecting the rules of classical painting.

His very first works from Brittany

still bear traces of an academic palette,

devoid of vibrant and bold colours.

"I then had only bistres and earth colours on my palette,

whereas Wery had an Impressionist palette.

Like him, I began to work from nature.

Working next to him,

I noticed that he could get

more luminosity from his primary colours

than I could with my palette of the old masters."

During his second trip to Belle-Ile, in the summer of 1896,

Matisse meets with another artist,

who has been living there for several years:

the Australian John Peter Russell,

one of the first Post-Impressionists.

Russell works with only a maximum of six bold colours on his palette,

which he applies in large, vigorous and vibrant brush strokes.

"And soon I was seduced by the brilliance of pure colour.

The search for colour did not come to me from studying paintings,

but from the outside:

that is, from the revelation of light in nature."

During this trip, Matisse begins to explore a visual device

that will soon become dear to him: that of the opening,

be it a door, as seen here,

or, as it would often be the case later, a window.

Open Door is a painting of a peculiar modernity:

neither a human figure, a still life, nor a landscape -

simply a geometric arrangement of lines and surfaces

framing what is to be found at the heart of the painting:

light, in all its fragility.

"Brittany has an intimate and delicate side

that you have to be able to penetrate.

Its light is particularly silvery

and its skies are pearly.

So I came back from Brittany with the idea of a new palette.

Little by little, I started to paint as I felt.

I was saved.

Freedom is to follow the path that your qualities prompt you to take.

Liberated from the influence of the Louvre, I moved towards colour.

I then painted a Dinner Table."

In this painting,

the palette of the young artist gradually brightens,

mixing greys, chestnuts and bistres

with more vivid colours

that announce a new luminosity.

At the beginning of 1898,

Henri Matisse has just married Amelie Parayre,

originally from the Toulouse region.

With her, he will at long last discover the South of France,

as the newlyweds have chosen

to spend part of their honeymoon in Corsica.

"While I was in Ajaccio,

I began to marvel at the South that I didn't know yet.

It was by visiting this astonishing land

that I got to know the Mediterranean.

There, I was dazzled:

everything glows,

everything is colour, everything is light."

Henri and Amelie Matisse settle

in an apartment on the outskirts of the city.

For this painting, Matisse explored the hills overlooking the sea.

Reflections of emerald and bright red

tinge the white foam of waves breaking on the beach.

"Nature inspires the imagination to make representations.

But to improve the pictorial quality of this representation,

the spirit of the landscape must be added."

In Corsica, Matisse discovers

trees and plants previously unknown to him.

"Almond blossoms amidst silver olive trees,

and the sea - blue, blue,

so blue that we could eat it.

Large eucalyptus with variegated leaves

like dark-blue rooster feathers.

Dark-green orange trees with fruits that are like jewellery."

He also sees for the first time

palm trees, cactuses, aloe vera, prickly pears,

opening up a small crack to another world,

of which he will only really discover a few years later,

and leading him to exclaim...

"Corsica - it was the Orient!"

But soon Amelie is pregnant.

It is time to return home.

"Despite the small distractions of a honeymoon,

I worked a lot, and in fact quite hard."

Matisse indeed returns

with no less than 55 works

produced in Corsica in just six months,

most painted in bright, pure tones,

such as sapphire, emerald, rose madder,

creating an explosion of colours,

which, for the first time in his work,

makes the Mediterranean light glisten.

Amelie decides to give birth near her family.

The young couple spends

the last months of 1898 in Toulouse.

Matisse takes this opportunity to pursue

his exploration of the South,

painting more and more bright oranges,

such that Apollinaire will later proclaim,

"If one were to compare Henri Matisse's work to something,

one should choose the orange.

Much like it, Henri's work is a fruit of vibrant light."

(DISTANT BELL TOLLS)

Back in Paris, Matisse withdrew.

The years 1899 to 1903 are a sombre period,

during which he struggles to make a living from his art.

Wanting to overcome this lack of inspiration,

he decides to once again explore the South

for a change of mindset and to refresh himself.

He chooses to spend the summer in Saint-Tropez,

with Amelie and their youngest son, Jean.

All three settle in a cottage near La Hune,

the villa of the painter Paul Signac.

Within the first few days, in the Southern light,

Matisse regains the desire to paint.

"So I worked on my picture,

The Terrace At Saint-Tropez,

which really was the boathouse at Signac's house."

Signac soon introduces him to a new technique,

which consists of putting small coloured dots or squares together.

This is pointillism, which Signac theorises

under the name of Divisionism.

Matisse gives it a try.

"Then I painted the big composition titled

Luxe, Calme Et Volupte.

It's a painting made up of pure rainbow colours.

But all the paintings from the school of Divisionism

have the same effect:

a little pink, a little blue, a little green.

A very limited palette with which I didn't feel very comfortable.

And this led me to the idea of

juxtaposing colours close to one another,

each of them playing a role in expressing a whole...

..like the different notes of a musical chord.

This led me to painting with flat tones."

1905 — it is in Collioure,

a small port located on the border with Spain,

that his colour palette is completely liberated.

Matisse does not make this trip alone.

Along with his wife Amelie,

he is also in the company of another painter,

the young Andre Derain.

"We worked tirelessly, equally stimulated by each other.

The painting methods of our seniors

did not adequately convey the real portrayal of our feelings,

so we searched for new methods.

I started with the idea of the "final touch".

I applied my first colour on my canvas.

I added a second colour to it,

and when this didn't seem to match the first,

rather than carrying on,

I added a third, which would complement them.

So I had to keep doing this

until I felt that I had created complete harmony in my canvas...

..and I was relieved of the emotion that had pushed me to undertake it.

This state of mind is created

by the objects that surround me and react in me:

from the horizon to myself.

The window wall does not create two different worlds.

The space is one, from the horizon

to the interior of my studio."

At the 1905 autumn salon at the Grand Palais in Paris,

Matisse and Derain exhibit their work painted in Collioure.

The pure colours painted in a brutally flat manner

create a scandal.

One of the great Parisian art critics exclaims:

the gallery resembled a gathering of 'fauves',

French for "wild beasts".

Fauvism, the first important movement of modern art

in the 20th century is born.

Matisse is designated its leader,

even though he keeps a certain distance.

"The term "Fauve" was never accepted by the so-called Fauve painters.

We've always perceived it as a label propagated by the critics,

and nothing more."

At the salon, the Fauvist apotheosis

is found in Woman With A Hat,

a portrait of his wife, whose face was deliberately streaked

with green, yellow, orange and blue.

And when his painter friends ask

what Amelie was wearing on the day of the sitting,

Matisse mischievously responds...

"Black, obviously."

(WHIMSICAL MUSIC)

At the beginning of 1906,

Matisse pushes the provocative spirit of liberation even further

with a painting which will become one of his most emblematic:

The Joy of Life.

"When I apply the colour green,

it doesn't denote grass.

When I paint the colour blue,

it doesn't mean the sky.

I had to get away from imitation, even of light.

Fauvism came from the fact that we avoided imitation colours,

and with pure colours we would obtain stronger reactions."

So strong is the painting that it causes a sensation

at the autumn salon of 1906.

Above all, it makes Matisse the most modern of modern painters.

Picasso perceives Fauvism as a challenge,

responding to it in the following months with Cubism,

with a painting just as innovative and shocking for that period:

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

But Matisse stays away from the competition,

and begins to look beyond the South of France,

to the other side of the Mediterranean.

(NORTH-AFRICAN MUSIC)

"I have always loved the Orient to which I am constantly drawn."

He ventures there for the first time, during a trip to Algeria

that takes him to Biskra, on the edge of the desert.

"I found a wonderful oasis, cool and pretty,

in the middle of the desert,

with water meandering through palm trees.

The first time I saw the desert, I saw nothing

because I was obsessed with my childhood imagination.

I was always looking for the sea on the horizon.

The light from the sun was blinding,

and there it's almost always like this."

He returns from this brief stay in Algeria

with only one small painting

characterised by the flat colours of Fauvism.

(NORTH-AFRICAN MUSIC)

However, he brings back with him

carpets, fabrics and ceramics,

as he starts to build a palette of objects

that are found regularly in his paintings,

right up to the end of his life.

(BIRDSONG)

But Matisse will only resume contact with the Orient gradually,

as he moves to Issy-les-Moulineaux in 1909.

After a visit to a major exhibition of Muslim art

in Munich in October 1910,

he goes to Spain the following month

to continue his discovery of the Orient through Arab-Andalusian art.

He visits the Great Mosque of Cordoba,

as well as the Alhambra in Granada.

"This art suggests a larger space,

a proper visual space.

I found new validation here.

Everything I see here inspires me very much,

while in Paris, with the grey sky,

I feel paralysed."

In Seville, he purchases a large piece of dark-blue fabric

with garnets and ochre flowers.

The motif of the arabesque fascinates him,

which he adapts and continually revisits

in its various forms throughout his life.

This Arab-Andalusian fabric is found in his painting The Pink Studio,

which in fact represents his atelier in Issy-les-Moulineaux.

However, his truly significant encounter with the Orient

takes place in 1912 to 1913

on a back-to-back trip to Tangier in Morocco with his wife.

"The ship glided along without any rocking or pitching on the sea,

that was a little choppy but of the purest blue.

The horizon on the left is fringed by a few clouds,

and on the right by mountains of the Spanish coast,

which we have not lost sight of since the Balearics."

But the trip does not start well, as the sun does not come out.

"I was stranded at the Hotel de France,

which is on a hill in Tangier.

And it was raining absolutely all the time.

A torrential rain, which lasted more than a month.

Once the rain stopped,

delightful bulbous flowers blossomed

and the hills surrounding Tangier, which were the colour of lions,

suddenly became extraordinarily green,

with tormented skies,

very much like in the paintings of Delacroix.

(WISTFUL OBOE MUSIC)

I painted in a large estate.

I worked in a corner planted with very big trees

that had lush, tall foliage.

The ground was covered with acanthus,

which I had never seen before.

I worked there for quite a long time,

maybe a month and a half."

Taking walks in the medina of Tangier,

he paints many small, white buildings,

that capture light in an unexpected way.

It is while exploring the Old City

that Matisse discovers a small cafe,

which will inspire one of his greatest paintings

of his Moroccan period.

"This little cafe had a charming lounge that was very intimate.

I was working next door and heard a violin playing,

so I went in.

Curiosity pushed me to see the musician.

I surprised him by taking over his instrument,

and charmed the entire cafe."

(SOMBRE STRINGS)

From this stay in Morocco emerged a total of 20 paintings

of surprising beauty.

Particular significance is given to a piece

which Matisse himself named the Moroccan Triptych.

"The three canvases have been devised to be placed together

and in a given order.

The view from the window goes to the left,

the door of the Casbah on the right,

and the terrace in the middle."

The human figure is thus placed in the middle,

the focal point of the triptyque.

There we see Zorah, a prostitute,

who is Matisse's favourite Moroccan model.

She seems to be levitating,

the terrace barely suggested,

the lines of perspective

almost completely cancelled out

by the solid green, within which

the Moroccan slippers appear to float.

(NORTH-AFRICAN MUSIC)

Tangier makes a strong impression on him

and will occupy his mind for the next few years.

As the world rushes into the First World War,

Matisse retreats into his work,

which takes on a darker tone.

"My painting, The Moroccans,

is the beginning of my expression with black and its contrast.

I find it difficult to describe this painting of mine.

There are reclining figures of Moroccans on a terrace,

with watermelons and gourds.

The Orientals made use of black as a colour.

The Impressionists have driven black out of their palette,

but I put it back -

in the right place.

Because black is not only a colour,

it's also a light.

Revelation thus came to me from the Orient."

This is a little part of the Orient that he takes with him

when he gradually moves to Nice,

starting from December 1917.

"At the beginning, I stayed at the Hotel Beau-Rivage.

Returning the next winter,

I went to the Hotel de la Mediterranee,

where I spent each winter from October to May for five years.

I then took an apartment at 1 Place Charles-Felix,

on the top floor,

overlooking the marketplace and the sea.

It's a beautiful place - Nice.

What tender and soft light, despite its brightness.

When I understood that,

every morning I would see this light again,

I couldn't believe my good fortune.

It's a place where light plays the main role.

Colour comes after.

But it's with colour that we translate this light, of course."

Bathed in the Mediterranean light, his atelier in Nice

fills up with mashrabiya,

carpets, fabrics, ceramics,

screens and draperies,

that he's brought back from all over.

With this palette of objects,

Matisse creates a very personal universe,

allowing him to daydream about his travels.

Within this decor,

he disguises his models as odalisques,

his favourite subject for more than ten years.

"I had seen them in Morocco,

and so I was in a position

to put them in my canvases

without pretence

upon my return to France.

Take a good look at these odalisques.

A sunny clarity prevails in a triumphal blaze,

appropriating colours and shapes.

In this mood of languid relaxation

and under this radiant idleness,

which imbues objects and beings,

there's a simmering tension

which is specifically pictorial."

In the midst of this universe of odalisques,

Matisse, along with his wife Amelie,

leads a relatively bourgeois life

of a now established and renowned painter.

The artist, at 60 years of age,

has nothing more to prove to anyone.

And yet, it is precisely at this point, at the height of his fame,

that he experiences a deep crisis of confidence,

haunted by the feeling of having nothing new to say.

Once again, travel will be the only way for him to refresh himself.

"When you have worked for a long time in the same milieu,

it's useful at a given moment to stop the usual mental routine

and take a voyage that will let parts of the mind rest

while other parts have free rein.

As I've always been very taken by the characteristics of light

which bathe my subjects of contemplation,

I have often wondered what could be

its particular quality in the Antipodes.

He has only one thought in mind:

to make the ultimate journey par excellence,

a journey to the other side of the world,

that he's been dreaming of for so long:

Polynesia.

Still a novel adventure in the 1930s,

he departs on this long journey on his own.

He travels from Nice to Le Havre,

where he embarks on a transatlantic liner.

His presence on board does not go unnoticed.

(FOGHORN)

(LIVELY JAZZ)

Enroute to Polynesia,

he makes a stop in New York,

where he has his first shock —

the urban modernity that is unfamiliar to him.

"The first time I saw America - I mean, New York

at seven o'clock in the evening,

this gold-and-black block in the night, reflected in the water,

I was in complete ecstasy.

Someone near me on the boat said, "It's a spangled dress,"

which helped me to arrive at my own image.

It seemed to me that New York was a gold nugget.

Later, on the Fifth Avenue sidewalk,

I was truly electrified.

Seen from the street,

the skyscraper gives us the sensation

of a gradation of tones from the base to the top.

The sky begins after the tenth storey,

because the stonework

is already eaten up by the light.

The light and its reflections take the materiality from the building.

The gradation of a tone, which evaporates in the sky,

taking on the softness

of the celestial matter with which it mixes,

gives the passer-by a feeling of lightness

that is completely unexpected by the European visitor.

(UPBEAT JAZZ)

I find New York wonderful.

The air is so dry.

This is a very pure, non-material light,

a crystalline light."

Matisse buys his first camera

and begins to photograph the city.

(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS) He focuses on capturing

the play of light and shadow on the skyscrapers.

(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS)

"It's a new world.

It's big and majestic like the sea,

and furthermore we feel the human effort.

In the neighbourhood of a skyscraper,

there's a clear feeling of liberty

through the possession of a larger space.

Why did everyone tell me I wouldn't like it?

Since I've been here, I feel 20 years younger."

(ENERGETIC MOVIE-STYLE MUSIC)

(CHUGGING)

The journey to Polynesia continues

with a long train ride through the American West,

which creates an even greater rupture

with the Old World where he comes from.

"I arrived in San Francisco,

where the painters who met me were saying,

"You're here. We're going to have a grand banquet."

I said, "It's not possible."

I embarked on the ship Le Tahiti.

It belonged to an English company,

and departed San Francisco for New Zealand."

The journey is indeed challenging for the 60-year-old Matisse.

He is welcomed in Papeete by Etienne and Pauline Schyle,

introduced to him by a friend.

Both Pauline and Etienne are of mixed heritage.

Despite being only 26 and 27 years old,

they take great care of the elderly painter who's been sent to them.

They show him around the island,

taking long drives in their large Buick.

A friendship is formed between them,

with Matisse taking many photos of the couple

and of Pauline alone,

as her mixed beauty intrigues him a little.

Matisse stays at the Stuart Hotel,

then one of the tallest buildings in Papeete.

(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS)

"The mountain seen from my terrace.

It's a small town, not very extraordinary,

a small colonial town of 3,000 inhabitants,

dominated by a mountain several thousand metres high,

which is green from top to bottom.

The greenery is everywhere -

dark, very rich, very much like the green acanthus.

I find everything wonderful -

landscapes, trees, flowers and people."

(SINGING IN LOCAL LANGUAGE)

Intrigued by this very different life,

he observes the Polynesians discreetly from a distance

as they go about their everyday lives.

The only meeting Matisse allows himself, after a few weeks,

is with filmmakers Robert Flaherty and Friedrich Murnau,

who are also on the island,

staying at its south-eastern tip.

They are there to shoot the last scenes of their film, Tabu.

Like Matisse, they are international celebrities.

Being a cinephile, he has great admiration for both filmmakers.

(PIZZICATO MUSIC)

But it's with Murnau, who speaks fluent French,

with whom he establishes a natural connection in Tahiti.

"Murnau is a very cultured man,

who has a particular interest in the arts

and knows painting well."

The filmmakers have chosen superb locations

to film their final scenes,

including an astonishing motu,

a coral islet where only a few coconut trees grow.

Murnau invites Matisse to join him for more than a week.

"I stayed with him in a small hut.

Our extremely reduced level of comfort

forced us to have lunch under a mosquito net

and go to bed with the sun."

He keeps his distance,

so as not to interfere with the filming of Tabu,

occupying himself with making sketches

or doing nothing at all.

Sometimes Murnau would stop filming to photograph Matisse.

(CAMERA SHUTTER WHIRS)

On occasion, as both enjoyed canoeing,

they would go paddling together in the lagoon.

What an incredible encounter between cinema and painting

in a canoe at the other end of the world!

The surprise of a total otherness leads Matisse

to momentarily put painting aside.

He paints only one canvas at the start of his stay in Tahiti:

a landscape in which he tries to capture

something of what Polynesia's nature evokes in him.

But dissatisfied with the result of what he himself calls

a simple pochade, he then discards the easel,

and occasionally just sketches quick impressions that he saves for later.

And for the rest of the time,

he sinks into deep contemplation of the beauty of Tahiti.

"I stop writing to look around.

I see the mountain with its slopes lined with coconut palms,

behind me the sea fringed with trees

that look a little like Japanese cut-outs.

The white foam of the reef a kilometre away.

I have never seen such light and colours before.

And yet I have lived in the South for years.

Absorbed by the atmosphere,

bereft of ideas before the novelty of all that I saw there,

I was annihilated,

but unconsciously storing many things."

But Matisse is not content with just Tahiti,

and wants to push the adventure even further

in search of new horizons.

"I took a little trip to the Tuamotu Islands,

which are often at the same level as the waves, some coral islands.

I was on one of these islands, Apataki, because it was the island

that seemed to be the least threatened by cyclones.

I also went a little further, to the island of Fakarava,

which is a part of the rim of a stony coral."

After travelling so far,

here he finally finds what he's been looking for.

"Only the sea and the sky.

That is to say, the simplest things in the world.

The sea water is of a very primitive purity.

The sky, also extremely pure,

undisturbed by the wind."

Matisse will deliberately introduce

an infinite blue into these two works,

which could easily blend into one another,

a perfect visual synthesis of his Polynesian experience.

"Lagoons -

aren't you one of the seven wonders of the paradise of painters?

Very easily, you enter the water,

which is always lukewarm.

You sit on a piece of coral,

and using a box with a glass bottom,

you look inside the water.

The water of the lagoon is the colour of grey-green jade,

tinted by the sea bed

full of branching corals

with a variety of soft, pastel colours,

around which bands of small blue, yellow and brown striped fish pass.

I saw big sea trout between two waters,

which were like big, dark, black airships,

and in the background

sharks moving slowly.

I plunged my head, eyes wide open,

into the transparent water,

with the absinthe bottom of the lagoon.

And then suddenly, I raised my head above the water,

and stared at the light.

The light of the Pacific is like a large golden chalice

in which we look.

It has an intoxicating quality for the mind.

It's like the light stands still forever,

as if life is frozen in a magnificent pose.

Yes. I was truly surprised

by the extraordinary light in these surroundings.

All this is a little maddening.

There are too many things to see.

I am not sure about doing anything.

I feel an absolute peace of mind

like I have almost never felt before."

But soon the Polynesian voyage comes to an end.

With commitments in France, Matisse must return.

(FOGHORN)

"I came back to Marseille, a little frightened by the noise,

the cramped streets, the harsh houses.

From there, I went to Nice.

It was the month of August.

I found the greenery extremely poor.

I was a little disillusioned to rediscover Provence.

I no longer saw it.

In my Nice studio, before my departure for Tahiti,

I'd worked for several months on a painting without finishing it.

Upon my return, I went back to the painting and worked on it every day.

You resume your path with more certainty

when the preoccupation prior to the journey

takes possession of the mind again."

Matisse finishes the painting in only a few weeks,

but the Polynesian influence

does not appear yet.

It's not until a few years later, beginning in 1935,

that Polynesia gradually resurfaces in his work,

with the series Windows In Tahiti,

in the form of paintings, panels

and tapestries.

(DISTANT BELL TOLLS)

This latent influence becomes even more evident from 1941.

Matisse comes close to death,

following a surgical operation.

He finds himself in relative immobility,

which he will transform into a long interior journey.

"I am especially forbidden to travel in any sort of vehicle,

even in a sleeper carriage.

But after coming so close to death,

I emerge from it as if by a miracle,

and I seem to enter into a second life."

(SOMBRE STRINGS)

It is - above all - a second artistic life that opens up to him,

marked by a creativity of exceptional intensity,

where the azure of the Mediterranean

and the ultramarine of the Pacific mingle.

"I am made of everything I have seen.

Look, I am like a seaplane, which is about to take off.

It can only do it because it has floats carrying it,

carrying it...

Then it takes off.

It's not the floats that make it fly.

Once it flies, it forgets them.

They are no longer of any use.

The floats - they are whatever you desire them to be -

the Louvre, the masters.

Everything I have known."

The memories of these voyages

will continue to serve as his main inspiration,

particularly so when he settles

in the hills above Nice,

to take refuge from the dangers of the Second World War.

"I came to Vence to avoid the bombings.

Everything seems so far from Nice

that I place all my memories of Tahiti in these surroundings.

I relive my life.

When the breeze smells like burnt wood or grass...

..I smell the wood of the islands.

And I sometimes feel that my stay in Tahiti

has enriched my imagination...

..and that all this beautiful and sumptuous light

that I could not get enough of

now comes out in my work..."

(PLAYFUL PIZZICATO STRINGS)

"..in the form of haunting images:

madrepores,

corals,

fish,

birds,

jellyfish,

sponges.

I have attained a decanted form,

right through to the essential.

Details lessen the purity of lines

and harm the emotional intensity.

I work toward serenity through the simplification of ideas and form.

I cut in colour.

This is the moment when my hand sings by itself."

Matisse now works with an undulating line,

influenced by both the oriental arabesque

and the Polynesian seaweed,

to express himself in what is his greatest aesthetic innovation

of this last period of his life:

the cut-out gouache papers.

"Look at these blue women,

this parakeet,

these fruits and leaves.

These are cut-outs.

They are a form of arabesque.

The arabesque is arranged like music.

And it has its particular tone."

This quest for light through colour

finds its apotheosis in the last years of Matisse's life,

with the decoration of the Rosary Chapel in Vence,

which will occupy him for three long years.

"I created this chapel

with the sentiment of only wanting to express myself completely,

so as to apply my entire life's research.

I would like to make it my masterpiece."

(POIGNANT STRINGS)

"My main goal is to balance a surface of light and colour

with a solid wall in black and white.

These stained-glass windows

are composed of three well-thought-out colours.

These colours are quite ordinary in quality.

They exist in the artistic realm only by their quantity ratio,

which magnifies and spiritualises them.

I want visitors to the chapel

to experience a lightening of spirit.

Even without being believers, they find themselves in a place

where the spirit is raised,

where thoughts become clear.

My only religion is the love of the work to be created.

And the different lights that I have savoured

have made me more exacting

in imagining the spiritual light which I'm talking about.

In my art, I have attempted to create

a crystal-clear environment

for the mind.

I have found this necessary clarity

in many places in the world."

At the end of all the years and all the experiences,

Matisse has composed a unique palette

from all the memories of his voyages,

leading him to a progressively distilled vision of his art.

And in doing so,

he comes as close as possible to abstraction

for the sake of simplicity,

thus finding himself on the cusp of what is to come:

contemporary art.

"I know that it will be much later

that we realise how much of what I do today

is in line with the future.

A new era is dawning.

I understand that all my life's labours

have been for the great human family,

to whom a little of the world's fresh beauty

has been revealed through me.

I have only been...

a medium."

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