Henri Matisse and The Snail: A stroke of genius and serendipity
AISDL
August 27, 2022
Henri Matisse had been so sick that since 1948 he could not produce paintings and was confined to bed. But he did not stop to work and was able to perfect his technique of “draw[ing] straight into the color” (known as gouaches découpées) by cutting and tearing shapes from paper, which had been painted with gouache [1]. His 1953 The Snail contains colorful cut-paper collages. The work has since become a very famous example of his creativity. The invention empowered the artist to take on new creative opportunities [2].
The Snail 1953
Later, Tate Gallery presented the description by Lydia Delectorskaya, Matisse’s secretary, which told us the following:
“The Snail was made in the Hôtel Régina at Nice. H. Matisse had at his disposal sheets of paper painted in gouache by assistants, in all the colours he used for the ‘papiers découpés’. A background of white paper - of the dimensions indicated by H.M. - was put on the wall and the assistant pinned onto it the pieces of gouached paper which H.M. passed to him indicating exactly where they should be placed. When H.M. decided that his composition was finished, it was lightly stuck to the background. The panel was taken down when H.M. needed the wall for a further work. When later on it was sent to Lefebvre-Foinet [in Paris] to be pasted down, before anything was moved, an extremely precise tracing was made to ensure that no changes were made in the composition, not even by so much as a millimetre.” [2]
His stroke of genius was shown by the fact that he created the concentric pattern from colored cut papers, which creatively resembled a snail’s shell. For one that had not been equipped with prior background, recognizing this spiral pattern requires quite a bit of imagination.
Nonetheless, one can also learn about the serendipity element in Matisse’s stroke of genius in bringing up the creation, very much in line with the mechanism described in [3]. That serendipity-based inventive pinnacle occurred as follows.
Matisse had made many drawings of snails. Of course, the varying shapes came from nature. But then he observed them carefully until the moment his mind suddenly came up with an image “purified of the shell,” according to A. Verdet [4].
Our question now is: So, how many drawings would suffice to bring up an image “purified of the shell”?
Most probably, we don’t have an answer. However, he certainly perceived the value of the concentric shape and the possibility of composing colorful cut-papers as critical information for his equation. If we noticed the reality that Matisse passed away in 1954, the creation of The Snail might also represent his survival need as an artist: an artwork that could live well beyond his own life and thus make him near-immortal. And these details reflect exactly what the mechanism of serendipity presented in [3] explains, including his strict discipline for reproducing the work outside his hospital room.
References
[1] Bock-Weiss CC. (1996). Henri Matisse: A Guide to Research. Garland Publishing.
[2] Alley R. (1981). Catalogue of the Tate Gallery’s Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists. London.
[3] Vuong QH. (2022). A new theory of serendipity: Nature, emergence and mechanism. Walter de Gruyter.
[4] Verdet A. (1952). Prestiges de Matisse. Paris.