Fans of European travels and ocean views conjured by a French master of multiple mediums have much to celebrate this week, as the Saint Louis Art Museum (1 Fine Arts Drive; slam.org) welcomes its new Matisse and the Sea exhibit.
The exhibition, which will be on display through Sunday, May 12, is the first to examine the significance of the sea and related imagery across the well-known French visual artist Henri Matisse’s career.
Inspired by the painting Bathers with a Turtle, the exhibit traces Matisse’s evolution in depicting the sea through approximately 75 paintings, sculptures, paper cut-outs, textiles, ceramics, drawings and prints, as well as examining the African and Oceanic artists that served as sources of inspiration for Matisse.
“Matisse and the Sea provides a fresh, new perspective on an essential motif in Matisse’s art,” said Simon Kelly, SLAM’s curator of modern and contemporary art, in a statement. “The sea, in all its color and motion, served as a crucial catalyst for the artist’s formal experimentation over more than five decades. At the same time, it served as a metaphor for his global outlook and his engagement with and appropriation of highly inventive artworks from Africa and Polynesia, often within a French colonial framework.”
Matisse’s travels throughout Europe and his time with the sea are presented in chronological order as you walk through the exhibit, with a full timeline at the end. The exhibit is broken out into six main sections:
- Brittany to the Mediterranean Coast: The Early Years
- Collioure: A Constellation of Influences
- Bathers with a Turtle: A Fusion of European and African Traditions
- Nice and the Mediterranean Coast: The 1920s
- French Polynesia I and II
- The Late Paper Cut-Outs
Considered to be the Mona Lisa of the exhibit by Kelly, Bathers with a Turtle, which you can see at the top of this post, was painted in 1907-1908 and depicts a seascape with three nude females interacting with a turtle. New technical examinations of this piece conducted for this exhibit reveal Matisse’s revisions to the painting, including moving the bathers across the canvas, removing boats and hills and repositioning the turtle.
Matisse and the Sea is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog with essays by Matisse scholars examining the artist’s abiding connection to water and entries on the artworks. There is also an audio guide available featuring eight stops and speakers ranging from museum curatorial members to a wildlife veterinarian and conservation biologist from the Saint Louis Zoo Institute for Conservation Medicine. Visitors can also watch a video on Bathers with a Turtle to further explore the painting and the layers discovered underneath.
At the end of the exhibit, there’s a ginormous magnetic wall, resembling Matisse’s Oceania, the Sea and Oceania, the Sky, which will allow guests to create their own artwork.
The St. Louis Art Museum is open Tuesday through Thursday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Friday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Saturday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free. For a list of events related to the new exhibit, see below:
- Friday, February 23 — SLAM Underground: FLOW
Ride the wave during the first SLAM Underground of the year with cocktails and entertainment. - Sunday, March 24 — The Sea and the Overseas lecture
Alastair Wright, University of Oxford, will discuss what Matisse’s depictions of water tell us about his encounters with other cultures. - Thursday, April 4 — Art Speaks: Matisse’s Caribbean and the French Negritude Movement
Art historian Kathryn Brown will discuss Matisse’s posthumously published book based on poems by the Franco-American writer John-Antoine Nau. - Friday, May 10 — WAVE: Ripple Effects
SLAM and the Chamber Project St. Louis will highlight how artists and composers are influenced and inspired by waves of sound and light.
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