Was Henri Matisse’s sojourn in Vichy France de facto collaboration or quiet resistance? |
In 1947, the celebrated French artist Henri Matisse released a bound series of 20 prints collectively titled “Jazz.” The haunting, brightly colored prints were of collages Matisse made from shapes he cut out from sheets of paper.
Begun in 1943, the artworks lent themselves to comparisons with what France had endured in World War II. The Surrealist poet Louis Aragon found one image particularly compelling: “The Fall of Icarus.” Named after the ill-fated flyer of Greek mythology, “The Fall of Icarus” depicts a black figure, a single red dot on its chest, careening through a blue space interspersed with yellow star-like shapes. To Aragon, these yellow shapes were not stars but German shells exploding in the nighttime sky over occupied France in 1943.
What led Matisse to create such a work? Was it the turmoil of his outer and inner life under the Nazis? The occupation he endured, the secrets he may have kept? These are the questions at the center of “Matisse at War: Art and Resistance in Nazi Occupied France,” a new book by author Christopher C. Gorham.
During the war, the painter “becomes a beacon to the French people, the young people,” Gorham said. “This elderly and ill artist continued to create during the destruction all around him.”
All three of his children aided the French Resistance in some way, explained Gorham: Daughter Marguerite Duthuit-Matisse would be captured, tortured and imprisoned for her clandestine work.
Matisse himself had not tried to leave his country after the Fall of France. Rather, he relocated to the southeastern, Vichy-controlled part, first to Nice, then to Vence. His once-praised artworks were now calumnied by the Nazis as “degenerate art” and hustled out of public view — and sometimes into the hands of Third Reich thieves.
Yet the painter kept creating — and might even have sheltered refugees in one of his studios.
There are sweet accounts of Matisse’s creativity throughout the book. While in Nice, Matisse hired a Frenchwoman named Monique Bourgeois as a night nurse. They formed a bond, with the artist portraying her in his paintings, until their paths diverged.
“Matisse was a terrible insomniac,” Gorham said. “She helps him get some sleep. Every day, he would wake up with the sun, paint, create.” One day, “she tells her patron, ‘I’ve decided to take my vows and become a nun.’ Matisse, by this time, has grown very fond of her … The relationship goes into a kind of disagreeable period. Matisse is not in favor of what she’s doing, and she criticizes him for not being religious enough.”
It all turned out well for Matisse and the future Sister Jacques-Marie. In 1947, the same year “Jazz” was published, the nun asked........