Alastair Wright, LE BONHEUR DE VIVRE AND THE LEGACY OF SYMBOLISM – Matisse Symposium
Channel: Barnes Foundation
Date: 2016-11-21

Taking as its primary focus the complex affinities between Le Bonheur de vivre and the art and writing of Matisse's symbolist forebears (most notably Paul Gauguin and Stéphane Mallarmé), this talk explores the implications of this lineage for formalist and social-historical approaches to Matisse's work.

Alastair Wright is associate professor and tutorial fellow in art history at St. John's College, University of Oxford. His publications include Matisse and the Subject of Modernism (Princeton University Press, 2004), Paradise Remembered: Gaugin's "Noa Noa" Suite (Princeton University Art Museum, 2010), and numerous essays on European and non-Western Modernisms.

Inspired by the Foundation’s catalogue Matisse in the Barnes Foundation (http://bit.ly/MatisseBarnes), edited by Yve-Alain Bois and published in December 2015, this symposium brings together leading international scholars to examine Matisse in the context of the history of modernism.