One of the best arguments ever made for modern art opened this week in Philadelphia.
It was the lifework of Henri Matisse, or as much of it as the Philadelphia Museum of Art could lay hands on: almost 300 paintings, drawings, sculptures and prints. The work told more than all the books on the subject put together, and more than Matisse himself could possibly have explained. The aging master, who doesn't get around much any more, stayed far away, in his villa just outside the little Riviera hill town of Vence, making more pictures.
The exhibition traced Matisse's wavering, laborious progression from his early copy of a dead fish by Chardin, gleaming in mahogany darkness, to the abstract paper cutouts, brighter than circus posters, which he makes nowadays. Advancing room by room, visitors saw that Matisse had put increasing kick in his colors and bite in his outlines as he grew older.
Even those who have no stomach for modern art, or think they haven't, could see that Matisse draws convincingly when he pleases. So why all the distortion? There was no denying that his later paintings had a childlike gaiety about them, but why should he have drawn them all wrong, like untrained children's art?
"The Inherent Truth." In the catalogue, Matisse himself tried to spell out his position. "There is an inherent truth," he explained, "which must be disengaged from the outward appearance of the object to be represented. This is the only truth that matters. . . . Exactitude is not truth."
That sounded rather professorial, for a painter, but it helped some. A TIME correspondent who penetrated Matisse's seclusion last week found him far warmer than his words might indicate. At 78, Matisse spends half of each day in bed, and never leaves his house except for a short stroll in the garden after lunch. Illness has not dulled his appetite for life or for work. His blue eyes twinkle youthfully behind his thick glasses; his snowy little beard, jollity and industriousness make him seem something like Santa Claus. His bedroom and studio are both brighter than any toyshop.
He spends his mornings in the studio, his armchair drawn up to the easel, painting from the model or still life. The window looks out on to the uncared-for garden, and provides the quietest view in the room. Everywhere else one looks is blazing with color: bright silk cushions, bric-a-brac, copper vases, flowers, fruits, costume jewelry, feathers, and yards of vivid material looped over chairs or hanging ready for his models. In one corner stands a huge aviary which used to be flashing with Milanese pigeons (most of them died during the war). An old-fashioned country telephone perches on a stand in one corner. The walls are thick with paintings. Sketches of Matisse's 15-year-old grandson Jackie form a continuous frieze next to the ceiling.