Matisse Chips Away at His Tranquillity

His Sculptures Have An Edge Sometimes Missing in His Paintings

BALTIMORE -- French painter Henri Matisse often gets named as one of the three or four most important artists of the 20th century, so it's surprising to find that he promoted a La-Z-Boy theory of art. He said that art should have "a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair."

Matisse (1869-1954) often practiced what he preached: For every stunning picture that sets your mind racing, there's another that lulls you into complacency. That has made some of us doubt whether Matisse completely deserves his reputation. A show called "Matisse: Painter as Sculptor," closing soon at the Baltimore Museum of Art, can help settle such doubts. Dorothy Kosinski, incoming director of the Phillips Collection in Washington, conceived the show.

If you've put off visiting for fear of drowsiness, you've got two weeks left to remedy the situation. The exhibition demonstrates how sculpture could push Matisse toward a toughness that his paintings sometimes buried under pretty color and gracious line. In the sculpture, there's even a tension that you only rarely get in the paintings: Women's bodies are twisted into impossible positions; their arms and legs are severed; torsos can be cut in two, then crudely reassembled. That may acknowledge the tension that lurks whenever a woman strips for a male artist, when there's a sense that she belongs to him, that she's a passive creature waiting to have something done to her by the potent, active man. One great thing about Matisse's sculpture is that it accepts all that instead of camouflaging it beneath a pretty surface.

As a lump of stuff, sculpture always starts out with a coarse materiality that's not easy to overcome -- it takes hard work to go from the first, crude pinch of clay or blow of the chisel to a point where surfaces are slick and easy. In 2-D work, on the other hand, the clean void of the white paper or blank canvas starts things out with elegance; even the first line or mark that is put down hardly breaks the spell. You have to work toward a mess, instead of starting out with one.

Matisse's drawings and paintings don't always push beyond their medium's inherent comfort zone. His sculptures allow an anxious, probing side to come to light.

Matisse: Painter as Sculptor, through Feb. 3 at the Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Dr., Baltimore. Admission, by timed ticket, costs $15. Call 443-573-1700 or visit http://www.artbma.org.