SPRING 2016 REVIEW: J W ANDERSON

Tough And Tender 3

Henri Matisse, Woman in Blue, 1937

A romantic version of the tough/tender trend can be seen in the courageous and confident collection by J W Anderson – how new and fresh to bring Edwardian dress to the present! Prim leg-o-mutton sleeves were exaggerated to such extremes that they ceased to look feminine, becoming instead aggressive. The constrain of structured little black bras and corset type belts, worn on the outside, with a bold squiggle of a Vivien Westwood print is again unseductive and aggressive. Ruffled Edwardian tea dresses, a couple clearly recalling Woman In Blue in the paper doll outlines, are truncated, worn with bloomers showing, look rakish if anything. Lace, little ruffled collars, bowed sleeves and legs, the pretty style touches that make up a Matisse woman, is always undercut with something quite angry, like an insistent zipper, or unfriendly proportions, with a cross hatch of two messenger bags. Anderson's vision is thought-provoking and idiosyncratic - and for me, always memorable.

Vivien Westwood dress with Matisee print, 1982

SPRING 2015 MENSWEAR REVIEW

What a fresh, eye-opening start to another round of fashion shows and all those fashion tarts are off again on their business flights and cars in the carousel of stale parties and Instagram-ops and what-nots. Did you like Sarah Burton's Matisse collage-suitings at Alexander McQueen? I thought they were sharp and jazzy and Japanese (Comme/Junya, anyone?) at the same time, decorative without being bogged down. The entire thing was bracingly "racy", except for a quartet of looks that had the look of those black-and-red lacquer bento boxes: Too literal a reference to Japan.

It's clearly inspired by Henri Matisse's cut-outs (like this Blue Nude from 1952), which fashion types can see at the exhibition Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs, at the Tate Modern (on till 7 September) instead of worrying about which samples to wear.

Joyous Colourist Matisse

Henri Matisse spent his entire life as a painter studying and working with colour: "I feel through colour," he once said. He found this calling when his mother offered him a box of paints when he was recovering from an apendix opperation. He was 20 at the time.
In 1941 Matisse was diagnosed with cancer, that eventually disabled him and kept him from painting directly on canvas, so he found a new way of expressing himself: Cut-outs. His scissors drew the curvy lines in papers coloured with gouache. The Master renounces drawing and draws directly in the colour. Often lying down or confined to a wheelchair, Matisse found a way of changing his destiny. These late works are not cubist collages, or Kandinsky 's abstractions, nor the biomorphic signs of Jean Arp. It's a determined return to childhood, to joy. In 1947, Matisse published a collection of these paperworks, which he simply called Jazz, with the bold works of improvisation in colour.

I have this book, and last Sunday I loaned it to Teacher. I hope she takes care of it, because it is indeed a precious thing, full of joy.

Monday Means Matisse

No Monday blues today - only Matisse blue: It's a public holiday!

Matisse Monday

Someone mentioned Matisse (I think it was Teacher), and some of us said we loved Matisse, some mentioned his 'wild' strokes, some mentioned his colours. I said I had his book Jazz (nobody has heard of this, very wierd) at home. K said he has never heard of Matisse. We were all so puzzled by this. But then, of course K is only 20. He has hairy legs, and a head like an Angkor Wat statue.

Odalisque in Red Trousers, 1925, Henri Matisse: Matisse's numerous ‘odalisques’ show his passion for decorative pattern and motifs. Matisse visited the French colonies in North Africa (Algeria in 1906 and Morocco in 1912–13) where the brilliant light, exotic environment and Moorish architecture inspired a new body of work. His odalisques were ‘elaborate fictions’, re-creations of the harem with French models posed in his Nice apartment. The fabrics, screens, carpets, furnishings and costuming recalled the exoticism of the ‘Orient’.

Monday's Matisse

Fruit and Coffee Pot, Henri Matisse, 1899