La Négresse
{{Short description|Painting by Henri Matisse}}
{{about|the artwork by Henri Matisse}}
{{Infobox artwork
| image_file = La Negresse.jpg
| image_size = 300px
| title = La Négresse
| artist = Henri Matisse
| year = 1952–53
| type = Cut paper painted with gouache
| height_metric = 453.9
| width_metric = 623.3
| height_imperial = 178 11/16
| width_imperial = 245 3/8
| metric_unit = cm
| imperial_unit = in
| museum = National Gallery of Art
| city = Washington, D.C.
}}
La Négresse (1952–53) by Henri Matisse is a gouache découpée, made of cut pieces of colored paper.
Medium
Starting in the 1930s, Matisse began to experiment with creating art by cutting paper into shapes. By 1950, he had primarily shifted to this mode of art making, perhaps because his health and disabilities made painting on a large scale difficult.[http://www.centrepompidou.fr/education/ressources/ENS-matisse-EN/ENS-matisse-en.htm "Henri Matisse"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080804202522/http://www.centrepompidou.fr/education/ressources/ENS-matisse-EN/ENS-matisse-en.htm |date=2008-08-04 }}, Pompidou Centre. Retrieved 25 December 2007. These "cut-outs" were often mural-sized and made from pieces of paper painted with gouache.{{Cite web|last=|first=|date=|title=Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs|url=http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2014/matisse|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=2021-01-20|website=Museum of Modern Art}}
La Négresse was first pinned onto the wall at his apartment in Nice, France around 1952.{{Cite book|last1=Cullinan|first1=Nicholas|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/859305247|title=Henri Matisse: the cut-outs|publisher=The Museum of Modern Art|others=Buchberg, Karl D.; Cullinan, Nicholas; Hauptman, Jodi; Sirota, Nicholas; Friedman, Samantha; Frigeri, Flavia{{!}}|year=2014|isbn=978-0-87070-915-9|location=New York|pages=196|chapter=Chromatic Composition|oclc=859305247}} He rearranged the composition until early 1953.{{Cite book|last1=Hauptman|first1=Jodi|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/859305247|title=Henri Matisse: the cut-outs|publisher=The Museum of Modern Art|others=Buchberg, Karl D.; Cullinan, Nicholas; Hauptman, Jodi; Sirota, Nicholas; Friedman, Samantha; Frigeri, Flavia|year=2014|isbn=978-0-87070-915-9|location=New York|pages=196|chapter=Bodies and Waves|oclc=859305247}} It takes up an entire wall. A newspaper review called the figure "a giantess."Richard, Paul (1977). "The Cutouts of Matisse: Seabirds, Ponies and Acrobats: Masterpieces from Scissors Seabirds and Ponies: The Designs of Matisse." The Washington Post, Sept. 9, 1977, B1, B11.
Subject or Inspiration
File:Baker Banana.jpg in the banana skirt, 1927.]]
La Négresse may be inspired by Josephine Baker, a black American dancer whose popularity reached its height in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s.{{Cite journal|last=Millard|first=Charles W.|date=1978|title=The Matisse Cut-Outs|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3849913|journal=The Hudson Review|volume=31|issue=2|pages=326|doi=10.2307/3849913|jstor=3849913 |issn=0018-702X|via=|url-access=subscription}} One of Baker's famous outfits was a skirt made from bananas, which Matisse may be invoking in the orange-yellow forms around the figure's waist.Wright, Alistair (Sept. 2014). "Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs". Artforum International, 53, 370-371,12. "La Négresse, 1952–53, a work not in this show but inspired by the films of Josephine Baker, reiterates racialized clichés in the enlarged belly and hips and in the abstracted yellow form that represents Baker's notorious banana skirt. (In the catalogue, the curators celebrate Matisse's invention of a new visual sign for the skirt, but it is a sign utterly reliant on ready-made stereotypes.)" Baker's association with jazz music may have also inspired Matisse, who had previously designed a book titled Jazz (1947). Matisse's depiction has been criticized as reiterating "racialized clichés in the enlarged belly and hips." Others have proposed that Matisse presented black women as beautiful.{{Cite book|last=Murrell|first=Denise|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1161990675|title=Posing modernity : the black model from Manet and Matisse to today|publisher=Yale University Press|others=Wallach Art Gallery, Musée d'Orsay|year=2018|isbn=978-0-300-25764-9|location=New Haven|pages=|oclc=1161990675}}
Other scholars propose that the figure may be of another famous dancer, Yvette Chauviré. Matisse had created an earlier work about a dancer (Creole Dancer, 1950) that art critic Louis Aragon identified as Katherine Dunham, who Matisse had seen perform.Tompkins Lewis, Mary (December 3, 2018). "'Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today
Reception
The work has been praised as "the culmination of Matisse's art." It was acquired by the National Gallery of Art in 1973.{{Cite web|last=|first=|date=|title=Henri Matisse, La Négresse, 1952|url=https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.53587.html|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=2021-01-20|website=National Gallery of Art}}
In 2018, the work was referenced in the title of Denise Murrell's exhibition and catalog Posing Modernity: the Black Model from Manet to Matisse.