3.1.5.1: Luxe, calme et volupté
- Page ID
- 188829
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by DR. BETH HARRIS and DR. STEVEN ZUCKER
Henri Matisse, Luxe, calme et volupté, 1904, oil on canvas, 37 x 46″ (Museé d’Orsay, Paris)
Key points:
- Luxe, calme et volupté borrows from the Neo-Impressionist style in its brushwork, but does not adopt Neo-Impressionism’s approach to color.
- Rather, this painting anticipates the Fauves’s imaginative use of expressive color.
- Color and form are key ways that early 20th-century artists began to abandon representation for abstraction.
Painted while the artist stayed with the pointillist painter, Signac, at his home in Saint-Tropez on the Côte d’Azur. Matisse’s title comes from Charles Baudelaire’s poem, “L’invitation au voyage (Invitation To A Voyage)” from his collection, The Flowers of Evil. “Luxe, calme et volupté” translates just as it sounds in English: “Luxury, calm, and voluptuous(ness).”