Matisse the Master: A Life of Henri Matisse: The Conquest of Colour: 1909-1954
The 2005 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography went to Hilary Spurling's Matisse the Master, a major biography of Henri Matisse.
Work Information
A major biography of Henri Matisse focused on his mature years.
The Los Angeles Times selected the book in Biography. It continues Spurling's large-scale portrait of Matisse's life and art.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Knopf
- Published
- 2005-09-06
- Pages
- 544 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 18.42 x 4.6 x 24.28 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780679434290
- ISBN-10
- 0679434291
- Price
- 6724 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Biographies & Memoirs
“If my story were ever to be written down truthfully from start to finish, it would amaze everyone,” wrote Henri Matisse. It is hard to believe today that Matisse, whose exhibitions draw huge crowds worldwide, was once almost universally reviled and ridiculed. His response was neither to protest nor to retreat; he simply pushed on from one innovation to the next, and left the world to draw its own conclusions. Unfortunately, these were generally false and often damaging. Throughout his life and afterward people fantasized about his models and circulated baseless fabrications about his private life. Fifty years after his death, Matisse the Master (the second half of the biography that began with the acclaimed The Unknown Matisse ) shows us the painter as he saw himself. With unprecedented and unrestricted access to his voluminous family correspondence, and other new material in private archives, Hilary Spurling documents a lifetime of desperation and self-doubt exacerbated by Matisse’s attempts to counteract the violence and disruption of the twentieth century in paintings that now seem effortlessly serene, radiant, and stable. Here for the first time is the truth about Matisse’s models, especially two Russians: his pupil Olga Meerson and the extraordinary Lydia Delectorskaya, who became his studio manager, secretary, and companion in the last two decades of his life. But every woman who played an important part in Matisse’s life was remarkable in her own right, not least his beloved daughter Marguerite, whose honesty and courage surmounted all ordeals, including interrogation and torture by the Gestapo in the Second World War. If you have ever wondered how anyone with such a tame public image as Matisse could have painted such rich, powerful, mysteriously moving pictures, let alone produced the radical cut-paper and stained-glass inventions of his last years, here is the answer. They were made by the real Matisse, whose true story has been written down at last from start to finish by his first biographer, Hilary Spurling.
Hilary Spurling was born in England and educated at Oxford University. She has been theater critic and literary editor of The Spectator and a book reviewer for The Daily Telegraph, and has written biographies of Ivy Compton-Burnett and Paul Scott. The first volume of her biography of Henri Matisse, The Unknown Matisse, was an Editors’ Choice book of The New York Times . Since its publication, Ms. Spurling has written and lectured extensively on Matisse and originated an exhibition about the importance of textiles in the artist’s life and work that opened at the Royal Academy in London in the spring of 2005 and at the Metropolitan Museum in New York in the summer of 2005.
Reviews
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The two parts of the book are a masterpiece, an example of what i would like a biography to, and is so hard to find. No cliche, no kitsch, no chip surprises, a real research, exciting, touching and full with understanding of the complexity of a life and the artistic path. I wish they teach writing on the example of this work, thanks a lot
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Great writing by an author who has spent her life studying Matisse .
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Matisse described his art as the product of " The mysterious workings of instinct" and this struggle to engage with his art is the heart of this excellent biography.Matisse put his art above everything including his family and as a consequence at the end of the book you understand his working methods and the struggle with his medium but are left with a partial view of the man. This is no fault of the author as the book is well written, well paced and absorbing; it is rather the reflection of his single minded attempt to understand what his work was about and how it should develop. Matisse can be compared to an early Christian ascetic trying to live the hardest possible hermit existence in the desert because only through struggle and total dedication can God be understood.This may seem a bit arid but in fact the book is a really good read as well as being informative and illuminating.
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Wonderful book. Beautiful writing. One of the best biographies I've ever read, period. Only complaint is very few images. Color plates are good quality but very slim. Other images also aren't abundant. But for a biography on Matisse, I couldn't recommend it more highly.
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I read both of the biographies written by Spurling on Matisse. I felt that the first one, The Unknown Matisse, was the weakest of the two (but still very much worth reading). Some photo captions were confusing and this first book could have been edited down a bit. We really don't need to know about realtatives of realtives, etc. The second book, Matisse the Master, is excellent. Both seem to be well documented and reader-friendly (without the mystique and jargin that you sometimes find in these books, especially if written by pompus art historians or academic types). The plates of Matisse's works are good but there really should have been a second set of plates in the second book. Major pieces were discussed with no photographs, leaving the reader to seek out images from other sources. Both books together offer a Matisse biography that gives an intersting, thorough, and balanced presentation of the artist, his personal demons, the historical context, family members and their interactions, Matisse's creative understandings and struggles, his interaction with other artists and historical figure, etc. If you like Matisse's work, the two books are well worth the modest price and investment in time to absorb 800 pages of material!