New Aquisition: “Poésies” by Stéphane Mallarmé

A sensible acquisitions policy

While the collections of the Matisse Museum are essentially based on bequests linked to donations from Henri Matisse and his heirs to the City of Nice since 1953, to which we should add deposits by the State, we now need to diversify our acquisition methods and develop a real purchasing policy allowing our institution to continue its mission of further expanding its collections.

Targeted consideration of our collections of graphic arts, printed matter, photography and documentary material helps us envisage a considered expansion of the collections, to ensure they integrate in a useful way with the museum’s collection. Indeed, many acquisitions could relate to paintings from the Matisse Museum, while others shed light on Henri Matisse’s creative process, at the heart of the museum’s scientific work, and help broaden and renew our understanding of the collection.

As part of its acquisition policy to promote resonance, the Matisse museum wished to acquire Poésies, the only book illustrated by Matisse missing from its collections, and so relaunch a process of annual purchases.

A major interest for the Museum’s Collection

Henri Matisse established himself as one of the great painter-illustrators of the 20th century. However, he came late to this type of activity, through the commissions of Poésies by Stéphane Mallarmé in 1930, then Ulysses by James Joyce in 1935, before devoting himself to it regularly after his operation in 1941. He went on to produce eleven books between 1942 and 1952. Matisse was a great reader, familiar, since his Parisian early days, with literary circles. He also loved books, as shown by his vast library at Régina, which included some wonderful editions found in Paris and Nice.

Most of the books illustrated by Matisse are luxury works, or have become so, intended for art collectors, book lovers or museums. He designed them in their entirety, selected the texts, repeated reading of which brings out through free association a visual framework as well as a setting, chose the appropriate medium – linocut, lithography, or photolithography – as well as typography, its placement on the page and its size. With each of these books, he completely renewed his approach, attempting to find a visual equivalent to the text. For example, the antique Mediterranean atmosphere of Pasiphaé by Montherlant (1943) continues through the dark tone of the pages of linocut illustrations. The romantic character of the sonnets of Florilège des Amours de Ronsard (1948) matches the delicious outline of the lithographs, faces, embraces and plant ornaments. In Lettres portugaises (1946), the richness of the plant-inspired decorations reflects the nun’s love. Each of Matisse’s books offers its own space, light and tone which moves us as much as his paintings and large compositions in cut-out gouache paper. He writes on the matter: “I do not differentiate between the construction of a book and that of a painting.” (“How I made my books”, 1946)

An exceptional work essential for studying the collection of the Matisse Museum

Albert Skira’s invitation to produce an artist’s book came at the right time for Matisse, who was going through a time of crisis. He spoke of Poésies not as an illustrated but as a decorated book, emphasising the way he considered the book as a total art object. He considered the format of the page, its empty spaces, its margins and the weight of the characters as essential elements in the design of a work.

For Poésies, he chose to remove the raised marks left around the edges of the plates when printing the etchings so that his illustrations extended to the edge of the paper and so obtained maximum graphic expressiveness.

Although on a very different scale, this creation was carried out in parallel with the commission for the large wall decoration for the Albert Barnes foundation, La Danse, for which the Matisse museum retains a set of preparatory works. It is therefore no coincidence that the “Mallarmé” begins with the representation of a leaping figure resembling one of the dancers of this monumental decorative work. This commission marked a turning point, “an awakening” to use the title of the vast essay Yve-Alain Bois devoted to this founding, decisive moment for the years that would follow. According to his analysis, it was by working simultaneously on executing different versions of La Danse and on illustrations for Mallarmé’s Poésies that Matisse returned to his experimental period before 1914 and ceased to be the painter of odalisques. We then witness the possibility of a return to disorder, or at least to what creates its condition, namely a return to risk and the questioning of painting and its means.