/ 斜杠艺术生系列 /

We went to the exhibition of Matisse at UCCA edge in the afternoon of 8th, Nov with classmates. There are three floors for this exhibition. From works on first floor, I knew about Matisse’s experience of learning art. At first his tried different medias like sculpture, stamping, then he also drew many paintings and sketches. From these drawings, I can tell that he has very steady foundation that supports him to create a variety of styles.

Among all the masterpieces, I especially like his live drawings. The lines seem to be very simple yet coherent, which clearly show the movement of subjects. It’s mainly because his sketches has many curves and straight parts to balance the whole movement. The change of thickness of the lines were also very detailed. Like when the part is facing dark, the line would be thicker; when the part is details on the body, the line would be fine and thin.

Moreover, Matisse can also draw body with texture really well. During the time I studied his works, I did some imitations of his live drawings and felt his catching of the movement is really natural. By analyzing his live drawings, I can learn many important skills and know where should I improve to get better.

What also impressed me from the exhibition was the part when Matisse started trying cutting-paper as prints on second floor were also remarkable. I can tell it’s an

innovative way of art. The cutting edge left after printing makes it looks natural and most of them used pretty bright colors.

On the other hand, I found that Matisse was good at observing his life and surroundings. He created many objects he met into forms of art. For example, when he went to a lake, he created two big drawings to describe the landscape he saw from the lake up to the sky. For me, I think is an important element that I should learn from, which means to get inspiration everywhere in my daily life.

During our recent school field trip, the entire school had the opportunity to visit the "Matisse by Matisse" exhibition at UCCA Edge in the afternoon. I believe that this exhibition was beneficial for our students, it provided us with inspiration and allow us to learn new techniques. Even though Matisse is a famous artist, and his works can be viewed online, the short-distance visit provided us opportunity to observe details in texture, and media, that we would have missed.

Personally, I found the exhibition could be helpful for my recent work. I’m able to gain inspiration from the artworks, gaining insights into material selection, sculpture building strategies, and artwork expression. One of the most significant techniques I learned from the exhibition was related to sketching. As I have been struggling with proportion and the muscle of the human body, I’m attracted by the sketches on display.

I realized that Matisse had divided his sketches into two categories based on the amount of time spent on them. His short-term sketches seem simple but with extremely flexible lines, which is overall unity in the complete artwork. On his long-term sketches there are detailed skin textures, smooth muscle trends, and natural flow. I could learn various techniques from both types of sketches, and I plan to use these strategies into both my current and future works.

On November 8th, 2023, our school organized a visit to exhibition “Matisse by Matisse”. Obviously, the exhibition was about Matisse and his art works. Most of students attended this field trip, me and my friend Jane was very excited about it.

From where I stand, I think the activity was really well organized because no part of the activity seemed to be chaotic at all. Upon arrival, we started visiting the exhibition. Thanks to our art teachers, they reminded me to bring sketchbooks, which were extremely useful for. Since we had almost 2.5 hours for the trip, me and my friends decided to take it slowly.

There were many works that I was really interested about, such as the self-portrait which created around 1900. It was made in preparation for two self-portraits Matisse made during this period. The artist positions himself diagonally to the picture plane, while his calm, yet resolute gaze stares out toward the viewer. In this portrait, Matisse never stressed the anatomical accuracy of his depictions, as this might not reflect deeper, inner truths. Instead, he sought to capture the subject’s idiosyncrasies and personality. And also, the way he used of the charcoal was really charming.

Except the prementioned work, in my perspective, his sketches and black and white drawings are more attractive to me than other colorful works. So, Jane and I sketched more than 10 of his works and most of them are his sketches and anatomy studies.

Undeniable, I learned a lot from observing his work and drawing sketches, but he is not a capable artist for my component 1 study. I am going to try to apply what I learned from this trip to my own art works. Luckily, Matisse’s screen print work is a good reference for me because we are going to have a screen-printing workshop in our graphic class.

All in all, it was a really good experience for me.