As such, they provided a telling symbol for the alienation of avant-garde artists such as Picasso. Circus performers were regarded as social outsiders, poor but independent. A more immediate inspiration for Picasso came from performances of the Cirque Médrano, a circus that the artist attended frequently near his residence and studio in Montmartre. The theme of the circus and the circus performer had a long tradition in art and in literature, and had become especially prominent in French art of the late nineteenth century. This is an early painting by Matisse, and yet the idea of balance and serenity found here would remain a consistent theme in his work throughout the next 50 years.įrom late 1904 to the beginning of 1906, Picasso's work centered on a single theme: the saltimbanque, or itinerant circus performer. Matisse said, "What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter."1 Matisse wasn't interested in conflict or politics. The painting takes its title, which means "Richness, calm, and pleasure," from a line by the 19th-century poet Charles Baudelaire, and it shares the poem's subject: escape to an imaginary, tranquil refuge. He also used a palette of pure, high-pitched primary colors (blue, green, yellow, and orange) to render the landscape, and then outlined the figures in blue. Matisse favored discrete strokes of color that emphasized the painted surface rather than a realistic scene. The forms in the painting-the figures, tree, bush, sea and sky-are created from spots of color, jabs of the brush that build up the picture. Matisse made this painting in the south of France, in the town of Saint-Tropez, while vacationing with family and friends.
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