The next stop on our tour through modern art is Henri Matisse. Compared to Picasso, Matisse was a temperate man with a bourgeoisie work-ethic yet by no means humble. Indeed, he imagined himself the high-priest of art. Van Gogh influenced both Matisse and Picasso. John Peter Russel exposed him to van Gogh in 1896 and by 1899 Matisse owned a third of van Gogh’s paintings. Different from Picasso though, Matisse adored Gaugin’ flattening perspectives and ceramics. Furthermore, he shared Picasso and these older artists ' desire to draw on pre-modern arts. For Matisse, pre-modern arts meant Islamic, African and Byzantine art. In 1889, appendicitis left a young Matisse bedridden. His mother him a paint box while he was infirmed. For the rest of his life, the joy, void, and nostalgia of creating art would haunt …show more content…
One has to wait until the end of Matisse’s life for an obvious religious work of art. Indeed, Matisse’s religious oeuvre comes as a gesamtkunstwerk. The Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence forms part of a brief post-World War II revived interest in religious art and architecture in Europe. Le Corbusier, for example, also designed the Notre Dame du Haut in the mining commune of Ronchamp during this time. How did Matisse come to develop and build both the interior and exterior of this small, unassuming building? After developing cancer and having surgery in 1941, a young part-time nurse Monique Bourgeois cared for Matisse. In 1943 Monique entered a convent in Vence near Nice where Matisse lived. Matisse also moved to Vence. Later, Monique, who took the name Sister Jaques-Marie, asked him to help design a new convent chapel. The church is nothing if eclectic if not almost a model for the interfaith spaces so popular today, yet more subtle. It does not strip the symbols from the sanctuary, as many such spaces do. Matisse borrows from the Byzantine church the chapel’s use of light. The confession door speaks of North African mosques. The Tree of Life has a Tahitian tapa