Late Criticism | Matisse and Impressionism by Meyer Schapiro

A critical model, a forgotten moment of experience: Meyer Schapiro’s review of the retrospective exhibition of Matisse at the Museum of Modern Art in 1931.

“We see within the works of a single man the radical transformation of art over the last thirty years, and we see it in the very man who was most effective in it. It has the character of a revolution, in fact, two revolutions – the first in the sudden turn from an impressionistic style to an abstract, decorative manner, which overthrew an almost millenary tradition of European naturalism; the second, towards 1917, in the return to naturalism, which preserved, however, the quality of design, attained in the preceding style by a drastic reduction of nature, by numerous distortions and the complete dissolution of perspective space.”

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