 Good morning, everybody. So like everybody else, I start with heartfelt thanks for the Barnes Foundation to allow me to be a part of this fantastic event. I feel really, really honored to be in this really sort of distinguished company. And in my case, my thanks go, as well, to the Yomiuri Shimbun. It's one of the largest Japanese newspapers. And they support it generously, my trouble to hear. And back to Tokyo, where I live and work. So yeah, and another special thanks go to Claudine Grandmont, who kindly asked me to contribute to her dictionnaire Matisse, about which she spoke yesterday. So my presentation will be largely based on these two entries. One is about photography. And the other is about states, the intermediary states of Matisse's works. But it's not exactly the same text. So yeah, and one other thing. I had a major technical problem as I prepared PowerPoint and draft for this talk. So it will be a little bit messy in parts. So I apologize profusely before I begin. But with that, I just plunge on. So my subject today is Matisse's so-called in-progress photographs. By this term, this term was coined by Jacques Flamme. By this term, I mean the recording, archiving, and publication of Matisse's art-making process by means of photography, which the activity which Matisse carried out in a very sort of sustained manner. The photos, for example, this is the photos of the famous 1935 so-called the pink nude or large reclining nude now in Baltimore. So these photos typically document multiple stages during the elaboration of a single work, mostly paintings, but occasionally drawings and also cutouts. And these are all done by professional photographers. And these images captured their objects, so the progress of a work in a rigidly head-on framing with no or only very little hint of its surroundings, as you can see here, I hope. Later, a small piece of paper was typically included to indicate the date of the shootings. The intervals between the shootings varied mostly just a day or two, but occasionally spanning over a month. In fact, the photos were taken only when the artist decided that the work had reached a significant stage. So these photographs, then, presented a kind of time lapse vision of the painting's process or drawing process with a certain amount of gaps left in between for the viewers to fill in by their imagination. Even so, Matisse's photographic archive surpassed any similar attempts in its comprehensiveness, meticulousness, and consistency, at least in his time. So think of Picasso with his celebrated photographs by Dormard of 1937 in Guernica. So Dormard took these photographs here on the left as the gigantic canvas came into being in 1937. So far better known as a document of its kind that Guernica photographs, nevertheless, remained one of the only two known such instances. Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, this is just one of the only two known such instances in as Picasso's vast of the other being, the churnal house, now in Mooma, 1944, 45. And this, despite the fact that Picasso expressed in 1935 a strong interest in, quote, preserving photographically not the stages, but the metamorphosis of a picture. I think these words apply equally well to the Matisse's in-progress photographs. So the history of Matisse's in-progress photography can be divided into two phases. The first phase, which was roughly the decade between 1906 and 1916, is already striking with examples like the famous autochrome of harmony in red. Autochrome is an early color photography technique that was the first, I think, the first color photography technique that was widely commercially available. So the famous autochrome of harmony in red from 1908 that shows the canvas here on the right in its early blue-dominated state. So there is at least one eyewitness account from this period, actually from around the fall of 1910, that by then Matisse had compiled a, quote, a large portfolio full of photographs, which he brought out to show, again, in beautiful proofs, I mean, photographic prints, the process of several of his works. So it is thus tempting to conclude that already in this period, Matisse's in-progress photography was a fully established practice. The body of evidence, or the corpus we currently possess, however, suggests a much more desultory affair. First of all, the choice of the works to be photographed seems rather random. For example, why only harmony in red and not the red studio, even though this one, too, underwent a very radical change in its overall color scheme? In fact, it is unclear how actively the artist was involved in their selection of the works to be photographed. And purely practical concerns seem to have played their role, too, such as the need to keep his dealers and patrons abreast of an ongoing project, which was surely the case with the 1910 music. You have two photographs, in-progress photograph, of the work on the right, 1910 music. So these photos were definitely made for the Russian patron who commissioned this work with dance, too, in 1910, around 1910. So other early, oh yeah, and so this need to keep his patrons updated was also at work with all those photographs that I will be showing later of the dance mural up there, upstairs. So other early instances, for example, Nymph and Cedar from 1908 in Pink Studio from 1911, may well have been made at the behest not of the artist himself, but of his gallery at the time, the Belem Jun, which is known to have frequently ordered these kind of photographs of the works in its care as part of their sort of stock-taking routine. So it seems safe to presume that even though mentioned quite casually here, this happy coincidence, in fact, greatly alarmed Matisse and spurred him to practice sort of one upmanship in this domain, a documentation of the genesis of the work by publishing his own photographs. And as a side note, this is a partial answer to Cecil's question because she wondered at some point during her presentation that if Matisse was thinking about Picasso, Picasso's print series Volard Suite, when Matisse was working on this one of all drawing series themes and variations. So I'm not sure if Matisse was thinking about Picasso in 1942, 43, but definitely Picasso's prints specifically. So these Volard Suite were on Matisse's mind in early 1930s. So he definitely thought about it. So there was this kind of competition between Matisse and Picasso happening. But more importantly, perhaps, these publications took part in what might be turned Matisse's media campaign. This he had already been pursuing for some time, but only in verbal forms such as interviews and published texts. The main objective here was to counter and sort of preempt the accusations insistently leveled at his art. The stark simplicity of Matisse's works often caused inattentive viewers to dismiss them as too easy, too facile, and effortless. So the process photos refuted this sort of widespread misconception by unveiling the often really staggering amount of time and energy that went into these pictures of production. So each publication of the in progress photos was intended to perform such sort of rebuttal. So here's another example. So this is a journal article from 1946, which reproduces four, three states photos of the Romanian browse from 1939, 40, which you will see later again. So there was this kind of sustained media campaign through publication. But the most spectacular effort in this sort of the whole media strategy remains the now famous exhibition at the Paris Gallery in December 1945, where Matisse hung half a dozen of his, sorry, this is another example. So this is the show at the Gallery in December 1945. So where Matisse hung half a dozen of his recent canvases side by side with their photographic documents. Matisse mounted two more exhibits with the same conceit of photos and paintings, juxtapositions, between fall of 1945 and early 1946. So going back to publications, these journal articles and books soon became part of what might be termed, sorry. Excuse me. Yeah, so I have actually, and now I want to focus on this extraordinary exhibition. So I have always been intrigued by the fact that for the two main installations in this show, meaning the Romanian browse and in the dream, both from 1939, 40. So for these two main installations of this show, Matisse ignored, or deliberately confused, the chronological order of the photographs. So I don't have time to sort of compare the right order, a right chronological order in the installations here. So you're going to have to kind of take my word for it. So this is really sort of the chronology is completely mixed up for the Romanian browse and partially, but nonetheless sort of very conspicuously for the dream as well. So there is that. And so one possible interpretation is to see this gesture, so this deliberate mixing up, as emphasizing the fragmentation and disjunction that define the evolution of both of these canvases. Actually, in general, Matisse's in-progress photographs show a relatively linear development that steadily advanced from the beginning to the end. So here I take the example of this work, which is in the Philadelphia Museum. So first, let me just walk you through that process. So by contrast, the Romanian browse and also the dream, the states constitute no such a continuous sequence, or not for long. So drastic changes occur periodically, each of which abruptly sort of steer the picture into an altogether different, utterly sort of unforeseen directions. So here's another change occurring here. So that's what I'm referring to as sort of the fragmentation and disjunction in the process of these works. So the fragmentation and disjunction of these two paintings, this and I have, unfortunately, I can't show you the whole process of the dream, but this applies to both of these paintings. So the fragmentation and disjunction were indeed a source of great concern for Matisse at this time. At a sort of conscious theoretical level at least, Matisse seemed to believe that the act of painting should proceed illogically and securely. And the photographs ought to confirm this notion, this conception of painting process that Matisse had. That is how he presented his in progress photography in an interview from October 1945, namely when he was designing the Mark exhibition. And this is actually the only known published reference that Matisse made to his in progress photography. Could I have my conception in my head and I want to realize it? I can't very often reconceive it, but I know where I want to end up. The photos permit me to know if the last conception conforms more to what I am after than the preceding ones, whether I have advanced or request. So despite its confident tone, the statements in this interview were, what he said in this interview were contradicted by the works he was producing at the very, just a few years ago, before. The nonlinear disconnected nature of their development. I might, I should probably go back to the whole thing. So the nonlinear disconnected nature of their development belied the straightforward progress evoked in the interview. The Mark show and its disturbance of the chronology then may have visually sort of, may have been an attempt to sort of visually stage this contradiction between Matisse's discourse and practice. If the pictures trajectory did not obey any sub-single logic, one should be able to freely rearrange its segments and the effect the result would be the same. If that was the idea, it seems to have been confirmed, but only sort of negatively by the total silence on the part of commentators. So until this day, really no comment has been made on this peculiar aspect of the Mark exhibition. If I seem to be making too much of this, you know, this sort of what may have been just a simple mistake, I would like to point out that this kind of a chronological or non-chronological installation at the Guérin Mark show was not an isolated instance in Matisse's work. There was indeed a precedent, a significant one at that. So when Matisse was working on his set-up writer drawing series themes and variations between 1942 and 1943, he pinned these sheets, I'm sorry, I can do this only sequentially, so this is one of the themes and variations. So when Matisse was working on this series, Matisse pinned the sheets up on a wall of his studio in Nice in multiple registers, as you can see here. Even though a letter from A to P and a number were inscribed to assign each sheet a specific place within this series, again the artist largely ignored the original order in the wall arrangement, and here again I don't have time to show you the magnified zooming in to prove my point, but here too the chronology was completely disobeyed. In the case of themes and variations, the reason for this sort of idiosyncrasy is clear. In his commentaries on the series, Matisse often stressed that the drawings were discrete units, individually separate and distinct. So even though all the sheets shared the same motif, all the sheets of a given series shared exactly the same motif, these sheets were not to be understood as sort of repeated, gradually improving attempts to better capture that shared motif. So Matisse declared, for example, to Louis Argon, each drawing is perfect as it is already. So there's no sort of progression or evolution toward perfection here. So it is to put a sort of visual stress on this aspect that Matisse adopted this, I think, the achronological hanging. So in addition, as Ivalan has pointed out long ago in his 1999 book, Matisse and Picasso, when Matisse published these themes and variations drawings as a book, as a wonderful portfolio, he had the drawings printed at separate plates, which the reader slash viewer can shuffle like a deck of cards. So here again, I think the purpose that they aimed was to demonstrate the radical sort of openness of the structure, a non-linear, open kind of structure. And I would argue that the same interest in the openness drove that model exhibition's hanging as well. Going back to the history of in-progress photography, that Matisse's show, the Mark's show turned out to be the greatest but also the last public showing of Matisse's in-progress photographs. Afterwards, the publication of the photos recurred only rarely, if any, at all. In fact, Matisse seems to have stopped having them taken completely for a few years until the beginning of the 1950s. By then, Matisse had abandoned oil painting almost completely and moved into new territories, notably the paper cutouts, which we will be hearing about a lot later today. As has often been pointed out in the literature, one of the most striking aspects of Matisse's cutouts is the radical mobility of its elements, especially during 1947-1948. This is the published version, especially during 1947-1948 when he filled the walls of his various studio and or apartments with smaller works done in this technique cutout. A color or shape initially created for a given composition could freely migrate to another composition on the same wall or another wall, and they form a new and often quite different relationship with the elements that are already there. With the physical boundaries of a given work now crossed so easily and frequently, the rigid framing centered on the individual object will be probably completely irrelevant. Sorry, I'm looking for the last page of... I'm almost at the end. But the end is missing. Okay, so I'll just improvise. So with the new cutout technique, this format sort of really narrowly centered on individual objects kind of format that he adapted for all the... his Matisse's in progress photography would be completely relevant. So from this point on, and I'm so sorry, I don't have the slides for them, but I think the traditional or the previous in progress photography would be replaced by these shots, these photographs of his studio, photographs that show us sort of the entire sort of the whole environment of working and living environment of Matisse where you can sort of trace this really free movement of color or shape, their free movement from one wall to another and from one composition to another. So in progress photography disappeared again and this time for good, but of course its disappearance once again marked a very important shift in Matisse's work. Thank you very much.