22 October 2023
Marquet, Matisse, etc
Weather has finally cleared after a week of rain and I was able to get out two nights ago to make this painting. It so reminds me of Albert Marquet, a painter I’ve always loved. Once in a while I come up with images that feel strangely inspired by him even if he wasn’t remotely on my mind. What was it, I wondered, that felt so familiar in this picture? How do I define it? Looking at it this morning, I perceived that it was really just a feeling. Sometimes, pictures whatever their size or importance, elicit artistic familiarity through any number of ways. Technically, I could note that he used a lot of white paint which he mixed into all his colours giving his pictures a feeling of a soft overall harmony. Here in this painting of mine, it’s also through a gentle sense of light that permeates this simple image. Does it share with Marquet a sensuous thread of artistic DNA embedded in the surface? Maybe, but anyway, it reveals to me an overwhelming emotional complicity with his entire oeuvre. Something else too, I like its subtle plasticity ingrained in each element of the picture.
So to say that I am a huge fan of Albert Marquet would be redundant at this point. He was an unabashed sensualist, to whom no doubt I identified with so completely even as a child. I was drawn in like a humming bird to honeysuckle.
Indeed, in my opinion, he was far more of a sensualist, more intuitive even than his close and dear friend, Henri Matisse, who achieved superstar status late in his career principally because he was far more of an adventurer than Marquet. Matisse, like an inveterate scientist ventured into newer and heretofore unexplored regions of Painting through experimentation.
To be sure, Marquet was more comfortable within the confines of traditional painting motifs, and because of this, he took less chances. He was a ‘steadier’ painter than Matisse but one who perhaps reached less heights because of it. What I mean is that his brilliance is even-handed. Perhaps I could explain this in tennis terms, if there are any old timers out there; Marquet was to Matisse as was Björn Borg to Jon McEnroe back in the comfortable world of base line tennis.. Like McEnroe, who expanded the game of serve and volley, Matisse ventured far out of his comfort zone (and our own) but couldsometimes miss the mark. When he is on, he is the best, so don’t get me wrong, I love Matisse, but because he was so willing to experiment, he naturally failed more, often producing stilted and somewhat academic work. Marquet, despite his traditional craft, was never an academic. unlike his good friend Matisse, he was tethered to older, more traditional means of expression. he was a true Romantic unlike Matisse.
I became aware of Marquet’s painting in my father’s books when I was still a child with no understanding of painting. I was just naturally drawn to a feeling in his work. Why is that? Why is someone drawn to certain pictures or even certain painters? Whatever it is, isn’t it grand? Isn’t it what keeps art alive in our cultural community?
Much later in life, I fell in love with his drawings which really got me out into the streets where (and when) I finally realised just how much I had always despised actually drawing from the model and the still life indoors. Marquet’s spontaneous drawings, along with those of Léo Marchutz, were to become my biggest influences later in life when I found my own assurance with crayon and paper. The most coveted book in my library is a thick catalogue full of Marquets ink drawings from an exhibition I once saw. In these drawings I sense that he is a far superior draftsman than Matisse when using ink and brush, though I would decidedly be in the minority on this judgement. Where Marquet is fluid and spontaneous and in a ‘Japanese zen’ sort of spirit, Matisse is stilted and dry, as if still trying to please his staid professors at The Beaux Arts in Paris. Though later on in his life, I think when Matisse began painting more fluidly, he did open up to a more spontaneous way of drawing. His pencil drawings are wonderful.
Anyway, as always, there is so much to say about all of this,,,,,,. It’s true that at times, I can be harsh concerning Matisse, and my ideas have disturbed a few friends because, after all, he is a kind God, even to the Post-Modernists out there who grudgingly give him a pass despite his colourful love for the figurative world of joy. But is it not for this reason why some painters (and public) really love ao many of his pictures? Is it not for this kind of colourful love of joy? Our affection isn’t always because a particular painting looks good, or because it answers something deep inside us, (though these are reasons enough to love a painting), is it not because as painters, we wildly admire the solutions that are solved within the complex parameters of each picture, and by each painter? And is it not like that for any vocation which is practiced with diligent care?
Addendum:
Matisse and Marquet were very close friends throughout their lives. They wrote each other continously for decades. I’ve read their correspondance in two small books published in France, and they are the kind of small books that gives one hope not just in Art History but also in humanity and the fraternal necessity of community.
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