LACMA installs its Matisse ceramic wall

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is gearing up for the Oct. 2 public opening of its new Lynda and Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion. Meanwhile, Thursday the museum unveiled its newly installed ceramic wall by Henri Matisse, "La Gerbe (The Sheaf)," a 1953 commission by Beverly Hills patrons Sidney and Frances Brody and one of the final major works of the French artist's career. (Matisse died 56 years ago this Nov. 3.)

The 2,000-pound ceramic is installed on the upper plaza level of the Ahmanson Building, near the entry to the Modern art collection.

LACMA's blog, Unframed, has the fascinating back story on how the commission came about, how the bequest to the museum was made and how the wall was removed from the Brodys' patio, raised by crane over the garden wall and into the street and brought to the museum for installation on a steel-reinforced wall. (The photographs of the process are harrowing.) It also includes a phone number -- (888) 788-7457 -- which you can call to hear the late Frances Brody, who died last year at 93, talk about the commission.

The ceramic was based on a large paper cutout of the type Matisse made in his later years, when illness curtailed his work as a painter. The Brodys gave the cutout to UCLA many years ago. According to LACMA curator Stephanie Barron, it will be reunited with the finished ceramic, probably in 2012, for a small exhibition and publication about the work.

--Christopher Knight

Follow me  @twitter.com/KnightLAT

Photo: Henri Matisse, "La Gerbe (The Sheaf)," 1953, ceramic. Credit: Christopher Knight / Los Angeles Times

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Comments

[Donald Frazell]

Why a white wall? Definitely takes away from it. As it was meant for outside with real life, you know, trees and stuff, why not a forest green or some other color? the Modern wing has done well using color lately, this is a mistake. Modern artist did not paint in white cubes, and often took their works outside to see how it held up witth the original creation.

[Christopher Knight]

To Donald Frazell: The Matisse ceramic mural was installed on a white wall in the Brodys' patio, stayed on that white wall for more than half a century, has never been installed on anything but a white wall, and is now installed on a white wall in the museum. You really might find the LACMA blog, Matisse's plan for the project and Mrs. Brody's comments about it to be informative.

[Donald Frazell]

It also was in the open air, had a tree nearby, and color below from the sofa pillows that allow it to be apart of life. Not a part from it, and sterile looking. White on white just doesnt work, and after Labor Day? For shame!

Visual art was always meant to be a part of all around it, have sounds, smells, other visuals like interesting textured and colored architecture to be personal and sensual. There is public art too, but this was for ones home, as most of Matisse works were.
Color my good man, harmonious color!!! Why the fear? Shrill single and tacky stuff like Pittmans is not rich and sensual, nor particularly expressive of life. But a Look at meeee! mentality. Time to put aside childish things. And Matisse was seldom childish.

It would have been better outside, with trees around it like itwas meant to be.

[RMills]

Of course a white wall - since Matisse made it that way. South of France near Nice and on the Riviera (where Matisse lived) has stunning bright light and Los Angeles California - beautiful clear bright light. Light that looks fantastic on white.
I think this shows us all just how much Mr. Frazell knows about modern art and how valuable his suggestions and commentary really are - now he's correcting Matisse.

[Donald Frazell]

It was designed to be OUTSIDE, it is itself a two dimensional plant. It is made to be with others. Modern art was never meant to be in sterile confines, thats academic contempt art, because it is too weak to stand on its own, and with weak color feel, needs to be seen as vibrant by isolating it from anything alive.

If you look at old photos of Matisse in his studio, there is always tone in the wall. As they are BandW, you can imaging them white if you want, but must be damn dirty then. Except for the wall he used for his cutouts, which was used as a canvas to work on, not a room to work in, they have color.

Every painting of Matisse working has colored walls, including by his hack students, a pale blue-green in Nice. True, they could be attempting to be fauvist, and failing, no one can teach art, even Henri. But every single painting by and of Matisse in a studio is brightly colored.

Why would he want his sterile white? Moderns didnt do that, only with the art school system of hacks, those who wanted to make their own pitiful works seem colorful by keeping it away from anything that could compete. Klee worked on his kitchen table, you think that was white? LOL!!!

Contempt schools are like 19th century academics who when uncovering all those Hellenic marble sculptures proceeded to make everything "pure". And as one critic called it before our era of mediocrity, Canova created masses of purrile, lifeless flesh. The Greeks(Hellenes) PAINTED much of their work. Usually the background of friezes, but also bodies as well. Academics always get it wrong because of their limited imaginations and withered souls. Art is not for you, its for US. For the living, not the careerist wannabes.

This work belongs outside, like it was designed to be, not much there by itself. It is made to be part of an environment. It is a design, a work not made by Matisse but designed to be made by others for a particular purpose, that as envisioned by its patron. Commissions are great for the imagination and creates new ways of doing things, of new motifs and purpose.

It worked for Michelangelo, who hated having to paint the Sistine, he was no painter! he cried. But, gotta do what the Pope wants, and worked out rather well, though it took half a ceiling to finally get it. the first half is rather staid and illustrative, and he knew it. And overcame it, as all true artists do. And that work is not by itself in a boring white room, but filled with color. And wins. Color makes you work, sterile white makes even the wimpiest of things look like they have character. And having character is key, somethng never developed in the sterile confines of academia.

It is always amazing how hacks always wnat to pretend they are someone else, now they want to claim to know Matisse mind! Just as hack religionists claim to know Gods. Both are retarded. I didnt correct Matisse, I only showed what is. He NEVER claimed to want white studios, just the opposite, as his many canvases revealed. Just because YOU cant turn a blue studio red doesnt mean a real artist cant.

art collegia delenda est

[Donald Frazell]

And obviously artistes dont get out more. Our beautiful light comes form the sky and earth, its reflections and humidity. It is at its most beautiful when out in NATURE. Try getting off those boring white Malibu beaches, and get to the Huntington and its incredible cactus garden. Descanso garden, the mountains, the deserts, yes our light is fantastic. And amazing how little it has been revealed and reflected in the artistes from the area stuck in their little whtie cubes all day.

All the best Cali artists with color have been from the Bay area, like Diebenkorn. Go hiking in the hills, especialy on the central coast, Montana de Oro is well known by me, as is most of the SLO area. THATS incredible. LA is a false ecology, made by diverting water from other places and making a desert of the rich Owens valley. Color is OUT there. Go find it.

Save the incredibly colorful and spiritual Nuestro Pueblo, the Watts tower. Tear down the isolated and sterile Ivories.

art collegia delenda est

[RMills]

Oh lordy lordy don frazell - spare us your lame musings on art and artists. Pretty much everything you say is historically incorrect. You're so wrong that you border on, and often fall over into delusional.

[Donald Frazell]

Fine, call me on it then. But no, you never have,and never wil. You got lame ass theories and twisted shallow and limited histories that is now the dogma of the academies, rather than our cultural heritage. As artists, we but add a link in the chain, one that is not linear, but a web, of three dimensions.

conceptualism takes but one singular, usually lame idea at a time, because they cannot think or feel deeply or layered, no relationships found because that would take away frorm its pristine "beauty". More like paranoid/schyzophrenic, as it is circular thinking. Afraid of the real world. And so only found in whtie cubes and the daycare centers of academia. Usually still reliving your childhoods, get over yourselves already, grow up.

Show me how i am wrong. i dare you. I am still waiting, have been for decades now, as we get worse and worse, having taken tangents away from creative arts purpose. So far from its roots, it doesnt know it has fallen off the tree and irrelevant now, An immature unopened pine cone, doomed to rot, and hopefuly become the manure that true art can spring from.

Well?

Save the colorful and spiritual Nuestro Pueblo, tear down the sterile and decadent Ivories.