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COPYRIGHT 2004 Modern Humanities Research Association
This article takes as its focus two texts written by contemporary European women writers and published in the mid-1990s, which draw upon the work of the French modernist artist Henri Matisse (1869-1954). These are: A. S. Byatt's The Matisse Stories, a collection of three short stories written in English and first published in 1993, and Villa Rosa, by the French novelist and playwright Marie Redonnet, published in 1996. Both texts incorporate protagonists who either have themselves met Matisse or have ancestors who have done so. As well as weaving direct references to Matisse's life and artistic productions into their narratives, Byatt's stories and Redonnet's tale also feature reproductions of works by Matisse in their 'peritextual' field. (1) Chatto & Windus's 1993 hardback edition of Byatt's The Matisse Stories displays a reproduction of Le Silence habite des maisons (1947) on the front of its dustjacket, while his Le Nu rose (1935) and La Porte noire (1942) appear on the back. (2) In addition, each of Byatt's three stories is prefaced by a line drawing by Matisse. Similarly, Flohic's hardback edition of Redonnet's Villa Rosa features a small-scale reproduction of Matisse's Jeune Fille en rose (1942) on its cover and the text is interspersed with a series of prints--thirty-seven in all--of works by Matisse. The prints, which are not reproduced in a chronological sequence, appear on the edition's left-hand pages and the novel's text on the right. The main body of the text is followed by a reproduction of a photograph taken in 1928 of Matisse and his model Zita in the artist's studio. This photograph precedes a three-page chronology of Matisse's life and achievements. Redonnet's novella is one of a series of more than twenty-five texts published since the mid-1990s by the French art-publishing house Flohic. The series, entitled 'Musees secrets', aims to explore the fertile common ground occupied by art and literature by means of short (semi-)fictional texts which are illustrated with reproductions of works of art by a single artist. As Alain Salles's article on the series published in Le Monde makes clear, each author selects the work or life of a celebrated artist and takes that material as the starting point for their recit. The series was conceived, however, with a view to avoiding the conventions of formal art criticism: 'Il ne s'agit pas d'une etude sur un peintre, mais d'un texte inspire par son oeuvre, qui fonctionne en echo avec les illustrations, soit a partir de la vie de l'artiste, soit sous la forme d'une fiction.' (3)
If I have chosen to explore Byatt's The Matisse Stories and Redonnet's Villa Rosa in tandem, it is not simply because they both use Matisse's work as a 'touchstone' (4) for their narratives and, like Matisse's artwork, make ample use of colour symbolism. It is also because both texts are united by a focus on the figure of the artist and the practice of artistic creation, a focus that has long been discernible in the fictional output of both writers. The texts contained in The Matisse Stories provide further evidence of Byatt's fascination with art, and painting in particular; a fascination already apparent in fictional works which predate this collection, such as Still Life (1985) and the short stories 'Precipice-Encurled' and 'Sugar', the tenth and eleventh stories respectively in her 1987 collection Sugar and Other Stories. (5) A similar interest in artistic or visual modes of representation, and what they awaken in and reveal to the individual, is apparent in Redonnet's fictional oeuvre. As Aine Smith has pointed out, Redonnet's texts are populated by a whole host of characters, including writers, dressmakers, dancers, and circus performers, for whom artistic practice serves as 'a means of generating identity, or, at the very least, of elaborating a fuller, more cohesive and enduring sense of self than that which originally exists'. (6) It is worth noting, however, that, prior to Villa Rosa in 1996, Redonnet's interest in what the individual derives from the process of artistic creation manifests itself most prominently, not in a fictional exploration of the artist/viewer and the painted canvas but rather in a textual preoccupation with the cinematic medium and the use of photography. Redonnet's novel Rose Melie Rose (1987), in particular, displays a preoccupation with the photographic image, while the cinematic image is a recurrent motif in Silsie (1990) and Candy Story (1992).
To return to Byatt's The Matisse Stories and Redonnet's Villa Rosa, however, both texts assemble a series of fictional characters who might be described as either 'aspiring artists' or 'scholars' of art, protagonists who experience differing degrees of success in their pursuit of self-expression and artistic excellence. The discussion that follows suggests that the Matisse-inspired creators foregrounded by Byatt and Redonnet in these two fictional narratives might more accurately be viewed as 'confectioners' and 'consumers' of art; protagonists for whom the appropriation and modification of key Matissean images and motifs play a central role in their artistic practice. Yet, what of Byatt and Redonnet's own textual appropriation of elements of Matisse's artistic vision? How might we interpret the role accorded to visual art by Matisse in both The Matisse Stories and Villa Rosa? It is with this question that I am principally concerned in nay comparative discussion of these two texts. In her non-fictional essay Portraits in Fiction, published over ten years after The Matisse Stories in 2001, Byatt reflects on the textual effects produced by a writer's inclusion of depictions of paintings in his/her fictional narrative. Such depictions may, for example, Byatt asserts, operate 'as an imagined icon or unifying motif', accentuating the narrative's thematic and aesthetic concerns. (7) Paintings set down in words, Byatt suggests, can also be used to reveal a protagonist's identity, casting light on their traits, attitudes, and self-image. They act as 'temporary mirrors', allowing protagonists 'to see themselves with a difference' (Portraits in Fiction, P. 5). What is striking about Byatt and Redonnet's deployment of intertextual references to Matisse's artwork in their texts is that both writers use these sets of references in conjunction with two key areas within their narratives. Broadly speaking, Byatt and Redonnet deploy features of Matisse's artistic vision, first, to flesh out a fictional location or landscape and second, to shed light on the workings of the creative process in which their often troubled protagonists are engaged. Intertextual references to Matisse's artworks are used in both The Matisse Stories and Villa Rosa to explore the human subject's interaction with space through the medium of art, an exploration that is facilitated, I shall argue, by Matisse's long-established association with the richly decorated bourgeois interior. As I shall demonstrate, this focus on the interconnectedness of art and spatiality is achieved specifically by means of a focus in these texts on the key role played by artwork or art objects in the creation and modification of domestic and commercial spaces. The second half of nay discussion...
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