Matisse Portraits
"The devotion of Henri Matisse to the human figure led him to make portraits of many different sitters - members of his family, fellow artists, professionals in other fields, partrons, and various others. At key points in his career he was also an obsessive observer of himself, creating intense series of self-portraits. This book, with some 200 illustrations, offers the first comprehensive account of Matisse's activity as a maker of portraits and self-portraits.". "Matisse scholar John Klein goes beyond standard approaches to portraiture that focus on questions of likeness and expression of character. He considers the transaction that produces a portrait - a transaction between the artist and the sitter (even when the sitter is oneself) that is social as much as artistic. Klein investigates the various social contexts of Matisse's sitters and finds that differences among these contexts produced different kinds of portraits and self-portraits with different goals. This was in part due to the personal and social identity of the sitter, but partly also to Matisse's self-perception with respect to the sitter and his goal of engaging the genre as a mode of personal expression. The author also addresses the question of whether depictions of hired models can be considered as portraits and concludes that they lack the social context that is necessary to portraiture. Through the psychological and contextual examination of Matisse's portraits and self-portraits, Klein throws new light on an important body of work by this influential artist. He discusses also the portrait practice of some of Matisse's contemporaries - Picasso, Derain, Cezanne, and others - to develop fresh insights into the status of portraiture within twentieth-century art as a whole."--BOOK JACKET.
Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.
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What the reading experience may hold
A fuller profile for choosing with more confidence—not just another copy of the preview.
Nonfiction
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Balanced tone · Urgent pace
A comfortable full-length choice for steady daily reading.
A good fit if…
Readers who want a thoughtful experience and enjoy noticing the connections beneath a book’s surface story.
This book's DNA
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Spoiler-Free Emotional Arc
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A quick reading snapshot
Edition facts and catalog signals to help you decide whether this book fits what you want to read next.
- ISBN-13
- 978-0-3000-8100-8
- Language
- English
- Edition record
- OL9330255M
A more thoughtful way into this book
This guide uses the edition details and category signals above to help you choose deliberately. It does not replace the author's work or a full review.
A comfortable full-length choice for steady daily reading.
Begin with its place in Nonfiction, then notice where the book resists that label.
Read for connection, not completion.
Mark one passage that sharpens the book's central concern and one that complicates it. That tension often reveals more than a quick summary.
Three questions to carry with you
- Whose perspective organizes the story, and whose perspective remains outside it?
- Which sources or lived experiences carry the author’s central argument?
- How does the book change the way you understand its larger subject?
Editorial framework by Wesley Bryan, BookenDeX Founder and Editor.
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