 So I think, I think this is my first Matisse Symposium and I hope that won't be the last. Is that the same for you? I don't know, but for me this is the first. So I'm very impressed, of course. I think it's a great idea to organize a Matisse Symposium because the research is for me a time of exchange and dialogue between researchers and not only researchers working on their own studio, you know. So I think it's an important moment that we are sharing together on Matisse and I thank you and I thank you the Barnes to invite me from France and Sylvie Patrie to organize that Matisse Symposium at the Barnes. I have been working at the Barnes as a Melon Fellowship. It was ten years ago. Time passes so quick and ten years. I'm back here after ten years and so happy to be back at the Barnes and to meet the people who were working there already ten years ago and the great experience that we had together with Karen Butler, Yvalin Bois, Barbara Buckley who have been working on this great Matisse collection for almost five years, I remember. And we were examining the pictures in the galleries there. It was a fantastic experience to examine the pictures each by each to get closer to the painting and first of all, Le Bonheur de Vivre. For the first time we saw it not on the wall and not on the stairs but then in front of us and revealing its mysteries and new things that I remember Yvalin climbing on the scale, a quatre pattes to look at Le Bonheur de Vivre so close and everyone was so excited with that. It was a real experience that we shared together I think and the book which finally came out is real. For me it's l'aboutissement as we say in French of all this research. So thank you. So I want to present today the next thing I've been working on after the Barnes experience. It's the Dictionnaire Matisse. So it's a more than 800 pages book. I've been working on for many years following my fellowship here at the Barnes and which is to be published next year hopefully by Robert Lafond in their great encyclopedic collection called Bouclin. So some 10 years ago I was lucky to visit Dominique Foucault the incredible Matisse library in Paris. Dominique who needs no introduction from me unfortunately is not here today spent years amassing all the books exhibition and sell catalogs and all the Matisse publication. So it was a dream come true for a young researcher because I could always go there and console difficult to find volumes all in one place. All this knowledge appeared to me in the form of yards and yards of shelvings. In this way it required a thickness or rather a length a concreteness I might otherwise never have imagined. For the first time I could view this great mass of material in a single glance. Still it was a bit overwhelming where do I start but my visit also proved to be reassuring. A library like that is a researcher companion. It spurs her own. Reading there allowed me to along the mind to roam. It was a place I could grab a book just because I liked the look of it or because it corresponded to an interest of mine at the time. I was also aware that Matisse himself would have approved this intuitive approach to knowledge. He had a well-stocked libraries in his studio in Paris and Nice at the Reginald Boulevard de Montparnasse not just the kind of a library of a self-respecting gentleman but one that helped him in his creative work. But why did I mention sorry it's supposed to be the first one but why did I mention the legendary four card library? Because a dictionary is a library and vice versa as well as being a catalogue that can be consulted at leisure. So one idea central to a dictionary is that of wandering, gleaning. We consult a dictionary on a precise point and seldom read it cover to cover. For example, if we want to look at the dates of Matisse occupying the studio on the case of Michel, we turn to case of Michel and then we find the answer, well, in my dictionary we find the answer together with many materials. But the dictionary can also be read either by the coincidences of its alphabetical arrangement or by the references at the end of each entry that guide them on their way. So if you look at Barnes next door you will meet Barr, Man Ray, you will bump into Manet, well, and so on. It is this kind of random reading that led the authors of the great Encyclopédie to write and I quote These kinds of collections are best used to furnish a measure of enlightenment to those whom, without such an aid, wouldn't take the pains to search it out. But they can never replace books for those who really want to learn. End of quote. That is to say that the dictionary remains to Boreau de Dros definition a frivolous enumeration. But it is still useful for those who want to go further. For me, the compilation of the Matisse dictionary allowed considerable freedom, not so much in the form of the articles which remain as we shall see relatively systematic but in their selection and in the order of the compilation which thankfully did not have to follow the alphabet. During what proved to be a lengthy adventure, several friends tease me by asking, so what letter are you now, Claudine? Even I was one of them. In the final analysis, I say final because this stage was rich only at the end of a long writing process and after how many classifications and subclassifications. It turns out that the dictionary starts with the word abstraction, not a great opening for a book in Matisse, I admit. And it does conclude with Zulma, a great cut out, a large cut out from 1950. Compiling a dictionary is not like writing a more traditional art history study and so I had to adapt to a peculiar form that shaped both my approach and my method of writing. You have to play the game, not fight it. These two would have delighted Matisse who once declared, je suis conduit, je ne conduis pas, I'm led, I do not lead. And who enjoyed exploring what they called the demands of the material. I too let myself be guided by the demands of the material or at least the genre they called a dictionary. I found the creation of the dictionary entries to be close to craftsmanship, to take up a distinction made by Roland Barthes. I see myself rather more on the side of the écrivant, A-N-T, than the écrivain, A-I-N, a writer then rather than an author. The term écrivant in French, suggesting a parallel with artisan, I guess craftsman. A dictionary writer can be regarded as a harmless judge. The readers who benefit from the fruit of these labours often voice a kind of compassion for the dauntless writers who devote so much time to what can be a dauntless task. Having nailed my color to the mass, I had to prevent myself from succumbing to boredom. Instead of compiling mechanically, I invented creative strategies. I had to. You can easily stumble across an unexpected sources that confirms or, on the contrary, invalidates your findings, for example. Over the duration of its writing, things evolved. For books of this size, head-hundred pages, head-hundred and sixty-nine entries, this evolution is certainly not as civil. So writing a dictionary is a cumulative process. The data increases as it grows. Systematically, editing the entries, however, allowed me to shape the rising tide of information by classifying it. Putting it together was like working on a giant jigsaw puzzle, which, as it came together, resolved into an increasingly clear image, that of an remittice, of course. In general, the logic for compiling entries developed organically. The process was based on cycles, groups of entries pertaining to the same family or theme, which the reader can see in the references given for each heading. Generally, these cycles or family of entries were determined by the period, for example, that of Buddhism, but the more complex entries, and these tended to come at the end of the process, were those dealing with more abstract concepts. So what kind of dictionary? You have many kinds of dictionaries. The Metis dictionary is not a lexicon. It contains no definitions. It belongs to the category of specialized dictionaries, like the dictionary of kukri, biology, vegetables, well, things like that, and then to the subcategory, historical. It deals with art history. The Metis dictionary is also a personal or egoist dictionary, as they say, because it indulges in the odd personal touch, inflections that grew in number over the course of compilation. If I had to use an adjective in the title of the Metis dictionary, and this might be, I didn't decide yet, it would be a practical, that is to say a handy reference book proposing a body of knowledge in synthetic and portable form. In English, one might call it a Metis handbook, and why not? I like this one, the Metis companion. The form this dictionary took was from the beginning predetermined by the series in which it is to appear Robert Lafond bouquin collection, which also publishes complete works on Oxford India paper and includes in its catalog also specialized dictionaries, one being Redictionaire Picasso by Pierre Dex. The Metis obviously balances the Picasso, although it revolves less around entries on works of art, which is predominant from, the predominant form in the Dex. So, as you don't know about the creation of the book and its specificity into the dictionary type, the next question to come is in the Metis bibliography or how the form of the dictionary could contribute something in this huge bibliography. Is it one more book? While the artist was alive, the dominant form of the publication was the monograph, a text of variable length followed by a section with reproductions black and white and then from the 40s increasingly in color. During the 70s, the exhibition catalog in contestably became the most common form of Metis publication. A large number of catalogs appeared during this period which were supported by research with notes on the artworks, chronologies, synthetic essays, etc. I'm thinking particularly of the catalog for Pierre Schneider Great Centenary Exhibition in 1970 and of John Elderfield in 1978. These were succeeded in the 80s and 90s by other exhibition catalogs in color increasingly extensive, bulky and exacting in approach. I refer in particular to the catalog of the exhibition in Washington the early years in Nice. The first to my knowledge to furnish a complete history of the works listed. An approach taken up by Dominique Fourcade in the catalog for the 1977 exhibition of cutouts in Washington and St. Louis and then to the catalog of the 1974 1970 in the Musée Nationale d'Art Moderne organized by Dominique Fourcade and Isabelle Monofontaine. The vast majority of these catalogs were based on a similar structure. One or more essays followed by a catalog of works and sometimes with a detailed chronology. More recently, we've seen the growth of section containing more technical analysis. I'm thinking here of the experimental years for example and the London cutouts catalog, London New York cutouts catalog. Apart from the exhibition catalog what else do we have in the artist's library? So there is the biography type spelling two volumes is surely the most valuable book on the artist, well I think. There is the essay of scientific character the Alastair Wright book for example. One on many others. The catalog raisonné type the catalog raisonné edited by Claude Dutry. The collection of writing conversations type with Matisse, the écrit propos sur l'art edited by Dominique Fourcade in 1972 and Matisse on Art produced by Flam in 1973. Also the discussion with Fr. Scouturier and Récidier published in 1993 and more recently still the posthumous publication of the Courton type script. These publications have transformed our vision of Matisse whose written work has acquired an unprecedented importance. From then there existed two ways of gaining access to Matisse via the text. The other via the image which is quite different of course. Next in line is editions of the correspondence with Camoin, Marquet, Bonnard and so on. Then the bibliography the cutting box guide to research stays my bible. I don't know if she is here. A number of observations can be made about this Matisse library. Undeniably vast it is dominated by exhibition catalogues treating of specific themes or periods and it comprises few publications of a general nature and no complete work catalogue. A special case is represented by Pierre Schneider's great monograph of more than 750 pages published in 1984 adopting a thematic structure based on an exceptional body of illustrations with many reproductions taken from the artist's own archives. That is at once a seminal text that defends a thesis that Matisse's work is essentially concerned with a sacred and an overview of the entire of. To my knowledge the dictionary of Matisse then is unprecedented in terms of form at least. It offers thoroughly research content with very few reproductions of his work. That is a real challenge but it is also perhaps a way of swimming against the rising tide that of the image reproductions everywhere. What has been the strange noise occurred? I don't know what. On the method and on the form of the entries. The entries are a variable length between 525 thousand size signs for the longest. In France we come by signs. Not by words. So the average is 2,000 signs per entries. Upstream corpus of entries had to be defined under least drum. At the outset although the final arrangements is alphabetical I distinguish three types of entries which are names, artworks and concepts. In this way I established a list based on indexes in various publications in particular bar, schneider or spurling for proper names and for cad for concepts. It's not very important but it will. In this way I established a list based on indexes in various publications. This list subsequently evolved into a list of three types of entries. The entries are variable length. The motifs dictionary is a single author dictionary. In the sense that I laid the groundwork and planned its contents and wrote some three quarters of the book. It remains however a collaborative project. Since I also invited 25 authors to contribute to it each according to their specialty entries on sculpture where entrusted to Elaine McGreen and the majority of those concerning the cutouts to Anne Coron. Yves Alain Bois wrote me a very perspicacious entry on Picasso John Klein on Matisse decoration linked in this first coming publication and so on. I also called open non-Matisseans. Name entries are two types names of peoples and places and number 550. Artists are the best represented that group is itself subdivided in several subtypes all masters and contemporaries and among the contemporaries those close to Matisse and the rest. I chose to exclude all artists whose career began after the death of Matisse. I had to, you know, find a limit. Then came the collectors. So Barne, Choukin, Morozov, Queen, Stein, etc. Americans, Bernem-Jean, Berg, Grün, Bayerleur, Galerie Georges Petit, Galerie Mag. Reviews and journals, Gaillard, Camerawork, Minotaur, Poésie 42 verbes, Mordons, Antoinette, Henriette, Catiard, Dermany. Art historians and conservators Barne, Berenson, Courthouse, Ducuille, Frey, Greenberg, and here again, I did not cover writers on Matisse for the last 50 years. Authors and publishers to Aragon, Baudelaire, Bergson, René Char, Colette, Malarmé, Monterlan, Nietzsche, Publishers such as Théria and Zervos, collaborators like Jagileff and Mourlou. For the work countries, there are 280 countries on works of art including paintings, sculptures, cutouts, as well as books and decorations. Relatively small corpus in relation to a pictorial of, estimated at some 1500 items. A number of paintings without an entry devoted to them do appear in the dictionary either included in another entry as, for example, Fede Fleur which is a proper name for instance, Etreta with the models such as Henriette and so on. All the illustrated books and the majority of the large cutouts and sculptures have their own entry. More specifically, each type of entry brought with it a certain number of prerequisites. Entries of the work type are based on the commentary on the work model. Writing this type of entry required the art to keep his or her eyes peeled. The objectivity of the contents if initially demanding what one might call a humble reading of all relevant sources did not prevent the author from considering the subject from a new angle. Here, I paid particular attention to the genesis and technique of each work. This means I attempted to place it in the larger context of its creation with special care taken to systematically juxtaposed paintings and graphic works and sometimes sculpture. I think this method contributes a great deal to the comprehension of a given work. In accordance with Matisse logic, an artwork cannot be reduced to its finest state alone since it is embodied in a multiplicity of successive states. If the genetic approach can be evident in the case of the major work such as Barnes Dance or Les Demoiselles à la Rivière, it tends to be less common for more modest pictures. How, for instance, can one deal with Le Chapeau à Plume of 1990 without referring to the album Saint-Con-des-Sains, which Isabelle Modonfortin is going to talk about, I think, or how can we talk about the panel La Verdure on which Matisse worked between 1935 and 1943 without having recourse to the photograph of the various states and studios recourse to the artist's correspondence and without relating it to the variants of the NAF and FON. Each work is provided with a technical description and its location, followed by a significant, even in its history, the date of its creation justified and very rarely revised too dangerous. Its various titles to its exhibition history and the publication in which it appears. There, of course, no claim to exhaustiveness. That's a job of a catalogue résumé. The intention is rather to decide what has proven to be the most significant in our knowledge of the work. For example, for the blue nude 1907, the choice of references emphasized on the one hands. The context of its creation, its genesis, its relationship to the larger discourse of primitivism and, on the other, the pictures' American story beginning with its stein-queen co-providence and its exhibition in New York. Lastly, it has proved necessary to incorporate new more cultural approaches that of Alastair Wright, for example. For the entries on the proper name types the only biographical elements are those with a direct relationship to the life and work of Matisse. Sorry, it's the wrong slide. This pen is taking tasks, save the readers traveling around for information in the indexes of masses of books and catalogs when they have one. Aragons' book, for example, both stuff with information has no index. Occasionally, of course, no information comes to light. In this case, the principal source was the Matisse archive in a city in Lino, where I spent long hours exploring the artist's files patiently digitized by George Matisse and Vanda de Ghebrion and generously placed at the disposal of the researcher. I would like to take this opportunity of failing their work and of thanking them for receiving me so often with open arms. Not to mention the land-thick conversations with Vanda, who knows so many things. The Pierre Matisse archives were likewise important as is the correspondence between Pierre and Henri. It is essential reading. These, then, are the main primary sources together with countless others scattered about in many publications and archives. For the concept entries, there are 130. They were foundational to the projects since it was from these that the ideas informing the rest of the dictionary were developed. As you might imagine, the purpose of these entries evolved a lot. To my knowledge, the first thematic index of any consequence was the remarkable one compiled by Dominique Fourcade for the écrit propos sur la, a guinouin book within a book. Its impact was significant. Its form produced a type of discourse privileging sequences of concept peppered with quotations. Fourcade index provided a foundation of work on the dictionary. But the concept entries were selected in a different manner funding less on what has been said about the works done on the works themselves and their aesthetic imports. The notion covered are different in nature. Some relate to the material of the work, to the technique media or support, for example, ceramic, the age of the work, frame, fresco, grattage. What does that exist in English? Grattage? Okay. Wall, stained glass, sculpture, and so on. Some other relates to the processes, state, photography, finish, sketch. There are also amusing entries that just like beard, cigarette, cooking, moto, telephone, why not? Telephone numbers. But he said I try to list them. I don't know all of them. There are also more contextual elements, library, collection, war, art, market, fashion, matters of death, radio, reproductions, travel. Aesthetic concepts, of course, categories such as oriental art, African art, Byzantine art, primitive arts, movements, and trends like cubism, impressionism, surrealism. And the general categories just like still life, object, landscape. These are also generative themes since Matisse liked to develop his art around iconic concepts related directly to the aesthetic bases of his work, such as studio, window, goldfish, rugs, or rather concerned with the plant world tree or leaf or else with the human body. This could look quite evident, but when you start thinking of writing an entry on window, for example, and you have to check all the windows in Matisse's art, then it starts to be different. It's such work, it's such work. And it's very rewarding at the end. So in addition to the alphabetically arranged entries, the dictionary offers readers a number of logical byways. One can move from entry to entry via a system of references placed at the end of each heading. So the majority of entries interconnect in this way. I was careful to avoid repetition and some information is sometimes split up among several entries. It nevertheless offers a particular style of reading intended for anyone who would like to go beyond cherry picking and or consultation in the narrow sense. I give just a few significant examples of these pathways here with that diagram and forvism. It's all in French because the book is in French. I hope that maybe that would be in English. But just to explain how if you start with forvism and then you can go and grab the book and then you go to Syniac, New Impression and and so on. Another example with a proper name, Renoir, gave you ideas of the type of entries. This one collection was quite interesting. It's a wall collection that Matisse had. He was a great, great collector. And another example was a studio which is related with this more conceptual this one I had to deal with it at the end of the process. So what are the underlying principles? Even though they may not be obvious at first glance, a number of crucial decisions were taken during the editing process. Though, of course, they could in no way jeopardize the objectivity of the dictionary contents. I started with the observation that overall approaches to Matisse's entire earth, I mean those that succeed in treating the artist's modes of production globally across several different historical periods, remain few and far between. The main reason being that there is yet no catalogue reasoning of the paintings, drawings or cutouts. So for each period's concern it was imperative to compose a synoptic table of the artist's output. The majority of entries for works on the dictionary endeavour to clarify these connections. Moreover, the compilation of thematic entries brought out a number of references in a nerve that frequently relies on self-referentials processes without though ever repeating itself. Secondly, I made a point to situate Matisse in his work in historical and cultural context. In this respect the branching tree-like structure of the dictionary constituted a useful tool for establishing interconnections. If it does reflect the scope of the most recent studies of Matisse, a significant proportion of the dictionary is devoted to the history of taste treating of the role of the art market of dealers, collectors private commissions, exhibition of reviews and those who produced them as well as reproductions. The case reproduction is very interesting. The question of the reproduction in the Matisse career is very interesting. In addition I show to place Matisse in history in the wider sense it is indeed necessary to make a distinction between the artist's apparent lack of commitment especially in the political sphere and the symbolic important his work acquired during the first half of the 20th century. Associated before 1914 with the avant-garde he was thereafter labeled as a representative of bourgeois hedonism. A suspicion exacerbated by his moving to Nice. The image of Matisse more than the man himself thus fluctuates according to the ideological context of the time. More specifically some articles on the in the dictionary offer I believe useful synthesis such as those on the studio collection, window return to order, Pierre Matisse Zervos while other aspects are portrayed in a new light, automatism balance war the fourth dimension the middle ages radio, sexuality and surrealism. So as a conclusion I think it is possible that everything interesting has already been said about Matisse. So many books so many exhibitions have been devoted to his work and yet compiling this dictionary confirmed for me that Matisse is far from the point of having revealed all its secrets. pioneering work remains to be done. I hope that this brief presentation of the Matisse dictionary has provided you with a glimpse into the complexities of a project that are hidden behind the idiosyncratic form of the dictionary. I am pleased to have been able to complete it and would like to offer my thanks to all those who provided me with support during what was a madcap enterprise and first and foremost all those who agreed to join me on it. I hope that it will find a readership and a place in the ever growing Matisse library shelf. Thank you.