Henri Matisse

Portable Matisse

Henri Matisse started a revolution in art by painting with hues that were heightened, saturated, unrealistic. He believed that color could not only describe objects, but also express emotions. Paired with flat abstraction and vigorous brush strokes, the style shocked the Paris art world of his time, and critics dubbed it the work of fauves (wild beasts). The Portable Matisse spans the entire career of this artist, now one of the most beloved of the twentieth century, from the joyful paintings to the stylized collages. This compact and comprehensive volume includes more than 400 illustrations and an introduction by renowned Time magazine art critic Robert Hughes.
The Portable Matisse by Robert Hughes
Universe Books, 2002, ISBN: 0789308436

The Little Book of Matisse by Laurence Millet

The paintings and sculpture of Henri Matisse (1869-1954) are among the most recognized and widely diffused of all art works. Matisse trained as a lawyer before switching to painting in 1891. After studying under Bouguereau and Moreau, he began to develop his own distinctive style and enjoyed an international reputation from 1920 onwards. One of the foremost artists of the twentieth century, his bold use of color and shape was instrumental in the development of the "Fauvist" movement, of which Picasso and Derain were also an important part.
The Little Book of Matisse, published in anticipation of the major Matisse and Picasso retrospective coming to the MoMA, New York, in 2003, offers a concise insight into the world of this renowned artist, whose paintings and drawings now adorn greetings cards the world over.
The Little Book of Matisse by Laurence Millet
Flammarion, 2002, ISBN: 2080108859

Henri Matisse Portraits

The devotion of Henri Matisse to the human figure led him to make portraits of many different sitters - members of his family, fellow artists, professionals in other fields, patrons, and various others. At key points in his career, he was also an obsessive observer of himself, creating intense series of self-portraits. This pioneering book, with some 200 stunning illustrations, offers the first comprehensive account of Henri Matisse's activity as a maker of portraits and self-portraits. Matisse scholar John Klein goes beyond standard approaches to portraiture that focus on questions of likeness and expression of character. He considers the transaction that produces a portrait - a transaction between the artist and the sitter (even when the sitter is oneself) that is social as much as artistic.
John Klein investigates the various social contexts of Henri Matisse's sitters and finds that differences among these contexts produced different kinds of portraits and self- portraits with different goals. This was in part due to the personal and social identity of the sitter, but partly also to Henri Matisse's self-perception with respect to the sitter and his goal of engaging the genre as a mode of personal expression. John Klein also addresses the vexing question of whether depictions of hired models can be considered as portraits and concludes that they lack the social context that is necessary to portraiture. Through the psychological and contextual examination of Matisse's portraits and self-portraits, Klein throws new light on an important body of work by this influential artist. The author also discusses the portrait practice of some of Matisse's contemporaries - Picasso, Kirchner, Bonnard, Vallotton, and Boldini - to develop fresh insights into the status of portraiture within twentieth-century art as a whole.
Matisse Portraits by John Klein
Yale Univ Press, 2001, ISBN: 0300081006