Matisse’s “Radical Invention”

Abstract

A recent exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, “Matisse: Radical Invention 1913–1917,” focused on a breakthrough in Matisse’s art that the curators attribute to the impact of World War I. That this dramatic change may be linked to the trauma of war is explored by studying the art itself, biographical material, and the artist’s own insightful comments. The thesis is advanced that the catastrophe in Europe aggravated Matisse’s neurotic conflicts and that his art reflects his effort to resolve these conflicts through new compromise formations and, more significantly, sublimation. Sublimation is discussed as it relates not only to the “radical invention” of Matisse’s wartime art but also to a concurrent transformation of his personality. These ideas about Matisse are applied to clinical vignettes in a consideration of the role of sublimation in a contemporary view of therapeutic change.