‘Matisse in the 1930s’ is a pirate’s chest of rarely seen art

Living in Paris in the early 1900s, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso kept a close eye on each other’s revolutionary breaks with the past. Forging related but distinct paths, the friendly rivals went on to become arguably the most influential artists of the last century. Matisse expressed his distinct sensibility when in 1908 he wrote that he dreamed of “an art of balance, of purity and serenity.”

These joy-affirming qualities abound in “Matisse in the 1930s,” the unmissable exhibition now on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Jan. 29. It brings attention to a transformative, yet little-studied decade of Matisse’s career, and spotlights the patronage of Philadelphia collector Albert C. Barnes, whose 1930 commission to the artist forms the conceptual heart of the show.

Collaboratively organized by PMA curator Matthew Affron, colleagues at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris, and the Musée Matisse Nice, “Matisse in the 1930s” will next travel to Paris and Nice. Affron’s Philadelphia installation has the largest selection of art of its three venues. Its engaging, loosely chronological sequence of paintings, drawings, prints, and sculpture, as well as illustrated books and film clips, constitute a broad survey of Matisse’s art in the thirties and the years that bookend it.

Matisse left Paris in 1917 for the southern Riviera town of Nice, where its crystalline light and mellow pace fostered a more tranquil life. In Nice, he continued his ongoing quest to give visible form to the essence of female beauty and erotic power. In the show’s examples of his art from the twenties, Matisse worked with models he considered collaborators as he courted simplicity with dematerialized space and rationed details.

His sensuous odalisques (French for concubines) twist and stretch like saltwater taffy. Matisse draped their harem-like settings with vibrant, richly patterned textiles that bespeak colonialist stereotypes of the 1800s.

Matisse’s interest in easel painting waned as the decade neared its end. His creative imagination was treading water. This inertia vanished after 1930, when Barnes invited him to visit his young foundation in Merion, Pa. Pointing to three architectural lunettes overlooking the main gallery, the collector asked Matisse to fill them with a decorative mural. “Paint whatever you want,” he told him. Matisse chose “the dance” as his subject. It was a theme related to the circle of dancers in the artist’s The Joy of Life (1905-6), one of the multitude of Matisse’s masterworks in Barnes’ collection.

Revitalized by the commission, Matisse worked on it for months before learning he’d used incorrect measurements. Starting again with new dimensions, he reimagined the project. As he had for the initial design, Matisse used unclothed models posed as dancers. On permanent view at the Barnes Foundation, today in walking distance from the PMA, this second version of The Dancers celebrates pairs of zero-gravity women in playful erotic combat.

“Matisse in the 1930s” is a pirate’s chest of rarely seen material that documents the two versions. There’s a fascinating film clip of Matisse drawing high above his head with charcoal tied to a long bamboo pole. With the aid of a digital slideshow, we are made privy to the artist’s thought process as it unfolds.

On view are a series of sequenced photos Matisse took as he worked. They mark the first instance of his use of photography to record works in progress, a practice he would adopt as standard practice.

Barnes’ commission stimulated Matisse to devise another tool — pre-colored cut paper shapes he could shift to plan his compositions. This method would become a historic end in itself in the years before the artist’s death in 1954.

The exhibition offers an unusual opportunity to ponder what Matisse saw and how he gave life to it in paint. The Woman in Blue (1937) hangs in proximity to the voluminous taffeta dress his model, secretary, and studio manager Lydia Delectorskaya wore when she posed for it.

A film record of the costumes and sets that Matisse designed for the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo’s Rouge et noir (Red and Black), provides a view, albeit fuzzy, of an otherwise lost ballet from 1939. Thanks to the ingenuity of the curator’s sister, Beatrice Jona Affron, the music director and conductor of the Philadelphia Ballet, the corresponding passages of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 1 accompany the vintage footage for the first time.

Before exiting through the gift shop, itself a marvel of Matisse-inspired merchandise, turn around and go back through the show for a second pass. Better yet, on your initial walkthrough, skip the excellent signage and focus on one detail — the way Matisse positioned elbows, or perhaps how noses connect (or not) to eyebrows, and discover how it varied through the years. The eyes trump the brain in this stunning exhibition.

“Matisse in the 1930s” runs through Jan. 29 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. For details, visit: https://philamuseum.org/