Making and seeing: Matisse and the Kuba decorative “system”

Journal of Art Historiography

关键词: Matisse;    linear;    pattern-making;    Kuba;    textile embroidery;   

DOI  :  

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Pattern has been consistently discussed and illustrated in art historical and ethnographic sources in linear terms.It is assumed that this is also how they are seen by their makers so that, if names are attached to them, it is as isolated figures abstracted from a total composition.In this essay these analytical assumptions are identified as a preconception inherent in modernist writings.Through a consideration of Matisse’s interest in the pattern-making practices of the Kuba of equatorial Africa - as he himself turned from drawing and painting towards collage - it is suggested that attention to processes of making invites a more nuanced approach to ways of seeing pattern: an architectonic model to set alongside a linear one.Furthermore, within Kuba culture - where making was originally gender-specific - men and women may have ‘seen’ pattern according to different models as evidenced in the earliest writings about their naming practices.

【 授权许可】

Unknown