Giotto fresco in Padua
Another excerpt from Out of Eden by DiPiero. This one is from the essay, Matisse’s Broken Circle, and is particularly interesting in its reference to Matisse’s concept of the religious imagination and his emulation of Giotto. I am compelled by DiPiero’s claim that Matisse’s career was “the most sustained and variegated exercise of religious imagination of our time.”
The religious imagination is a respondent, form-making act of consciousness…It assumes and is aware of a reality greater and more inclusive than individual consciousness, and it allows that awareness to shape its products. It seeks fusion even while it sedulously practices analysis and individuation. In such terms, Matisse’s career was the most sustained and variegated exercise of religious imagination of our time. Even more than Cezanne and Giacometti, and in a more methodical and self-conscious way than Van Gogh, he practiced painting as an expansive ceremonial of consciousness. And the eternal conflict between line and color was for him a medium of erotic desire. The presiding precursor of Matisse’s enterprise was Giotto. Matisse’s remarks about him arc over the long middle period of his career…He saw in Giotto a comprehensiveness, an integral completeness, that was both preliminary and summative, which possessed the preparatory definitions of cartooning and the conclusive exaltation of color fields. Matisse had already described in 1907 the two preoccupations that sheared off from Giotto’s unities as Sienese primitivism and spirituality (“disegno”) and Venetian physicality (“colorito”). Giotto remained the model of achieved completion and must have come to seem even purur as Matisse worked his way, decade by decade, through all the formal consequences of the breakup of that unity. As late as 1946 he wrote to Pierre Bonnard, “Giotto is the peak of my aspirations. But the journey towards something which, in our time, would constitute the equivalent is too long for one life…”
In 1951, three years before he died [Matisse said:] “All art worthy of the name is religious. Be it a creation of lines, or colors: if it is not religious, it does not exist. If it is not religious, it is only a matter of documentary art, anecdotal art…which is no longer art.”
Henri Matisse, Open Window, Collioure
If by religious Matisse meant spiritual, I would agree. But as a former Art History major and painter, I am fascinated by Matisse’s fascination with Giotto. I, too, was fascinated by both artists, but I never would have made any connection between their work. This gives me a great deal of thinking and looking to do. Thanks for the inspiration.
The idea of “a reality greater and more inclusive than individual consciousness,” is due for a comeback. These days, these things we share seem even more religious, a matter of faith. We’ve tipped toward individuation. While obviously perception is subjective—what else could it be?—we can still have a little faith that some reality, maybe even higher reality is accessible to us all. I love the idea of practicing painting “as an expansive ceremonial of consciousness” because it places consciousness in a more universal domain, a world we share.
These are the very issues that inspired me to start blogging in the first place. I wanted to find other people, in other fields, who felt the same way about these very personal and complex issues. Thank you to both of you for your comments.
Acencion of christ is one giottos most hidden treasures. The last judgement was a artistic venture of religious art. walter webb