An account of Henri Matisse's activity as a maker of portraits and self-portraits. The author considers the transaction that produces a portrait - a transaction between the artist and the sitter that is social as much as artistic - and investigates the social contexts of Matisse's sitters.

Published to accompany an exhibition held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, May 21-Sept. 6, 2011, the Reunion des Musees Nationaux-Grand Palais, Paris, Oct. 3, 2011-Jan. 16, 2012, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Feb. 21-June 3, 2012.

Discusses the early life, training, and achievements of the French painter.

Invites young readers to touch twentieth-century paintings, including Matisse's "Goldfish," Grant Wood's "American Gothic," and Chagall's "Birthday." On board pages.

Ed : Brooklyn College and City University of New York, Revised edition, Includesnew texts, introduction, biography, overview.

A brand new look at the extremely beautiful, if underappreciated, later works of one of the most inventive artists of the 20th century Between 1935 and his death at midcentury, Henri Matisse (1869-1954) undertook many decorative projects and commissions. These include mural paintings, stained glass, ceramic tiles, lead crystal pieces, carpets, tapestries, fashion fabrics, and accessories--work that has received no significant treatment until now. By presenting a wealth of new insights and unpublished material, including from the artist's own correspondence, John Klein, an internationally acclaimed specialist in the art of Matisse, offers a richer and more balanced view of Matisse's ambitions and achievements in the often-neglected later phases of his career. Matisse designed many of these decorations in the innovative--and widely admired--medium of the paper cut-out, whose function and significance Klein reevaluates. Matisse and Decoration also opens a window onto the revival and promotion, following World War II, of traditional French decorative arts as part of France's renewed sense of cultural preeminence. For the first time, the idea of the decorative in Matisse's work and the actual decorations he designed for specific settings are integrated in one account, amounting to an understanding of this modern master's work that is simultaneously more nuanced and more comprehensive.

"Throughout his long career, Henri Matisse (1869-1954) continually expanded the boundaries of his art. By repeating images in pairs, trios, and series, he conducted an ongoing dialogue with his earlier works in order to, as he put it, "push further and deeper into true painting." In this fresh approach to a much-studied artist, prominent scholars from the United States and Europe examine more than sixty works in concise chapters that focus on this aspect of Matisse's working process. From early pairs such as Young Sailor I and II (1906) and Le Lexe I and II (1907-8) through a series of late studio scenes from Vence (1946-48), Matisse is shown revisiting a given theme with the aim of devising innovative, often radical, solutions to such problems as how to portray light, handle paint, select colors, and manipulate perspective. New technical studies of the early paired works and photographs documenting the evolution of his later paintings help to elucidate Matisse's complex evolution. In numerous excerpts from letters and interviews, he is revealed as an artist who regularly questioned himself and his methods, a man of powerful intellect who regarded each new painting as an adventure. A significant addition to art historical literature, Matisse: In Search of True Painting is a revelatory study of a seminal figure in 20th-century modernism."--Page 4 of cover.