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Matisse: The Only Blue
The Only Blue interweaves scenes from the second half of artist Henri Matisse's life in the south of France (1907-1954), with reflections on his artwork. The work artistic creation and community, love and betrayal, landscape, home and exile, family, and war. It portrays an eclectic mix of artists, dancers, models, gallery owners, art patrons, friends and family members, struggling through the upheavals of the first half of Twentieth Century, culminating in the devastating realities of two world wars and the economic collapse wedged in between.
146 pages, Paperback
Published October 1, 2022
About the author
Laura Marello
11 books11 followersLaura Marello's seventh book Matisse: The Only Blue, a novel about the second half of painter Henri Matisse's life, set in the south of France, is forthcoming in October 2022 from Guernica Editions, and available for preorder. Her poetry chapbook Balzac's Robe was the second finalist in Finishing Line Press' New Women's Voices Series. Her collection of stories, The Gender of Inanimate Objects is shortlisted for the Saroyan Prize. Her first and second and third novels, Claiming Kin (finalist for the Patterson Prize in Fiction, Tenants of the Hotel Biron, and Maniac Drifter, are also available at booksellers and online websites for booksellers.
Marello is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University and a Fine Arts Work Center Provincetown Fellowship. She has enjoyed writer's residencies at MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Millay Colony, Montalvo Center for the Arts, The Djerassi Foundation, and the Outer Cape Residency Consortium. She has recent work in The Adirondack Review and Ligea.
Marello is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University and a Fine Arts Work Center Provincetown Fellowship. She has enjoyed writer's residencies at MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Millay Colony, Montalvo Center for the Arts, The Djerassi Foundation, and the Outer Cape Residency Consortium. She has recent work in The Adirondack Review and Ligea.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 1, 2022
There is a masterful two-volume biography of Henri Matisse by Hilary Spurling. In its 1,000+ pages it covers every aspect of his life in great detail. I have read one volume but haven’t quite got up the courage to start on Volume 2. The two-volume version may take you step by step through every detail of his existence, but in this dazzling 131-page book Laura Marello brings the painter Henri Matisse vividly to life using painterly images to bring the reader into his world, the places, people and the inspirations that shaped his work as it developed over his lifetime.
The book is divided into four parts Distill the Essence, Purify the Line, Saturate Color, Synthesize Line and Color, divisions that Marello shows mark stages in his artistic development, points in time where some new place, model or reaction to other artists moved him in a new direction. Paintings are referenced in Marello’s evocative prose, but not included directly. The book’s passages, some just a paragraph, some pages long, evoke place, person and color, always color.
“Sailboats on the Bay 1904
Framed by the window, seen through the window, with mauve and lavender right wall, not found in nature, hunter green reflection in the glass, and a coral one below, not found in nature, indigo hulls against a pink and coral, orange bay.”
Then a painting Collioure from 1905, “Here your Matisse palette emerges in its full brilliance, a year after St. Tropez’ revelations, another year, another summer, again on the Mediterranean, now with Derain, the sun even brighter, the colors even more brilliant…”
Throughout the book there is the tension between his intense focus on his art and the love and support for his family that they have always reciprocated. There is a succession of models to inspire him. In 1908 it is Olga, a painter, protegee of Kandinsky, who dominates his portraits for a while, forcing him to weigh the risk of losing his family “this family who lives around your work, surrounds it like the fortifications of an old-world city.” Marello’s imagery brings the family to life without feeling the need to go into great detail about each member. You feel the forces pulling him each way, feel the love for his family but feel the pull towards the “passionate, intense forthright, loving” model who inspires him to paint the Girl with Green Eyes 1908, Girl with Black Cat and Girl with Tulips in 1910.
The relative brevity of the book does not mean that the impacts of the tumultuous events of his lifetime are absent. As World War I is ending he moves Nice and the brilliant light of the South of France. There he paints Lorette and moves beyond Fauvism and Cubism. He can move freely between Nice and Paris once the war is over and he enjoys the companionship of his children, Marguerite whose fragile health is now more stable in adulthood and Pierre who starts a gallery in New York and introduces Matisse to the joys of fast cars.
From 1934 and through World War II there is Lydia, assistant to his wife Amerlie who then gradually becomes aide, manager, model, and inspiration replacing his wife in the key roles of his artistic life. This results in estrangement from his wife and daughter. Marello says it all in two sentences.
“A stain on your family record: you painted while your women fought in the resistance. Replacing your working companions and wife Amélie with your chaste working companion Lydia.”
Always in the background is the pressure to support the family which means courting collectors, some well-known like the Steins and Sergei Shchukin, others less known but no less important in both supporting him financially but also getting his work shown publicly, some of them wealthy Americans such as Claribel Cone. Commissions too, which often started as exciting challenges, required close collaboration with equally forceful and controlling creators like choreographers Diaghilev and Massine for whom he designed sets and costumes, and collectors such as the reclusive founder of the Barnes Collection in Philadelphia and Nelson Rockefeller. Marello communicates the stress
This jewel-like book brings Matisse and his art to vivid life by using brilliant language to evoke his art in all its color and texture. Even though the paintings are not shown they are a vibrant presence. As you read you `see’ The Parakeet and the Mermaid. 1954
“Between you, on the far left the blue parakeet: slim, tail dropped down straight from and invisible perch, like a teardrop, and on the far right the arabesque blue Mermaid – back arched, fins tucked, arms above her head – lies a vast expanse of orange and green or purple coral, seaweed, algae, plucked or fallen blue pomegranates”
This is a book to savor.
The book is divided into four parts Distill the Essence, Purify the Line, Saturate Color, Synthesize Line and Color, divisions that Marello shows mark stages in his artistic development, points in time where some new place, model or reaction to other artists moved him in a new direction. Paintings are referenced in Marello’s evocative prose, but not included directly. The book’s passages, some just a paragraph, some pages long, evoke place, person and color, always color.
“Sailboats on the Bay 1904
Framed by the window, seen through the window, with mauve and lavender right wall, not found in nature, hunter green reflection in the glass, and a coral one below, not found in nature, indigo hulls against a pink and coral, orange bay.”
Then a painting Collioure from 1905, “Here your Matisse palette emerges in its full brilliance, a year after St. Tropez’ revelations, another year, another summer, again on the Mediterranean, now with Derain, the sun even brighter, the colors even more brilliant…”
Throughout the book there is the tension between his intense focus on his art and the love and support for his family that they have always reciprocated. There is a succession of models to inspire him. In 1908 it is Olga, a painter, protegee of Kandinsky, who dominates his portraits for a while, forcing him to weigh the risk of losing his family “this family who lives around your work, surrounds it like the fortifications of an old-world city.” Marello’s imagery brings the family to life without feeling the need to go into great detail about each member. You feel the forces pulling him each way, feel the love for his family but feel the pull towards the “passionate, intense forthright, loving” model who inspires him to paint the Girl with Green Eyes 1908, Girl with Black Cat and Girl with Tulips in 1910.
The relative brevity of the book does not mean that the impacts of the tumultuous events of his lifetime are absent. As World War I is ending he moves Nice and the brilliant light of the South of France. There he paints Lorette and moves beyond Fauvism and Cubism. He can move freely between Nice and Paris once the war is over and he enjoys the companionship of his children, Marguerite whose fragile health is now more stable in adulthood and Pierre who starts a gallery in New York and introduces Matisse to the joys of fast cars.
From 1934 and through World War II there is Lydia, assistant to his wife Amerlie who then gradually becomes aide, manager, model, and inspiration replacing his wife in the key roles of his artistic life. This results in estrangement from his wife and daughter. Marello says it all in two sentences.
“A stain on your family record: you painted while your women fought in the resistance. Replacing your working companions and wife Amélie with your chaste working companion Lydia.”
Always in the background is the pressure to support the family which means courting collectors, some well-known like the Steins and Sergei Shchukin, others less known but no less important in both supporting him financially but also getting his work shown publicly, some of them wealthy Americans such as Claribel Cone. Commissions too, which often started as exciting challenges, required close collaboration with equally forceful and controlling creators like choreographers Diaghilev and Massine for whom he designed sets and costumes, and collectors such as the reclusive founder of the Barnes Collection in Philadelphia and Nelson Rockefeller. Marello communicates the stress
This jewel-like book brings Matisse and his art to vivid life by using brilliant language to evoke his art in all its color and texture. Even though the paintings are not shown they are a vibrant presence. As you read you `see’ The Parakeet and the Mermaid. 1954
“Between you, on the far left the blue parakeet: slim, tail dropped down straight from and invisible perch, like a teardrop, and on the far right the arabesque blue Mermaid – back arched, fins tucked, arms above her head – lies a vast expanse of orange and green or purple coral, seaweed, algae, plucked or fallen blue pomegranates”
This is a book to savor.
Displaying 1 of 1 review