The Matisse Stories

A cute little hardback, only 135 pages, with reproductions of three Matisse paintings on the dust jacket, and a short story inside the book related to each of the paintings. Each story also gets a Matisse line-drawing.

In "Medusa's ankles" (Le nu rose), a middle-aged academic and her hairdresser never quite manage to communicate until the professor goes postal and smashes up the salon. "Art work" (Le silence habité des maisons, the painting on the front cover) is about a middle-class "artistic family" who have to revise some of their ideas when their invaluable cleaning-lady Mrs Brown turns out to be the real artist in the story. And finally, "The Chinese lobster" (La porte noire) brings two staff members of an art college together over show more a Chinese meal to discuss an allegation made against one of them by a student.

This isn't a monograph on Matisse — he is away in the background most of the time, although the characters in the stories are often influenced by his ideas and by the beauty and clarity of his notions of colour. It is, though, largely about women as makers of visual art and as represented in it, especially in "Art work" where we see the comic contrast between Debbie and Robin's family, where Debbie has long-since given up her art-school dreams and taken a paying job in journalism to support her husband's largely arid and unproductive experiments with colour, with Mrs Brown, creating powerful feminist artworks on her knitting machine and from the cast-offs she gets from her middle-class employers. But all done with Byatt's normal ironic twinkle in the eye... show less

Byatt has become one of my favorite authors, ever since reading The Children’s Book and Possession. While her style is distinctly her own, it somehow reminds me of George Eliot, another of my favorite authors. Byatt’s care in examining human motivations within social contexts is profound. Her characters have rich internal lives, often kept highly private, and live in a world resplendent with crafted artistry.

Byatt’s backgrounds are full of beads, cups, cloths, paintings, texts that burst with colors: salmon pink, turquoise, ruby red. Dishes are hand-painted with tiny curls and dots, clothing is woven with care, everything is abundant and vibrant, as though physical objects exude the life that Byatt’s characters are too reserved show more to express. The world is beautiful, whether or not people notice. Or if they do notice, it’s through an aesthetic lens alone rather than emotional one.

The three stories in Matisse are “Medusa’s Ankles,” “Art Work,” and “The Chinese Lobster.”

“Art Work” is the centerpiece of the collection. Debbie and Robin are married with two children. Robin is an artist, long struggling to express his fascinations with the particulars of color. To help run the household, Debbie hires Mrs Brown. In bringing about order, Mrs Brown occasionally interferes with Robin’s studio by tidying up his “fetish table,” a place in which he collects examples of color that he wants to examine: cobalt-blue candlesticks, a golden-green apple made by Wedgwood, a reproduction of a sunny-yellow sauceboat designed by Monet.

Mrs Brown is a bit of a scavenger, often collecting cast-off clothes, yarn, neckties, odds and ends that she uses for private purposes. After Robin’s work is considered for presentation in a gallery and is turned down, it is Mrs Brown who proves to be the artist with her squishy, Muppet-like constructions: “huge tapestries, partly knitted, partly made like rag rugs, with shifting streams and islands of colour, which when looked at closely reveal little peering mad embroidered faces, green with blue eyes, black with red eyes, pink with silver eyes.” All her art is made from the cast-off materials she has collected.

The story addresses the question not so much of what constitutes art but rather what inspires it. Where do artists find their muse? And what is the impetus that makes people discover the ability to make change?

The other two stories in the collection are fascinating as well. Finely crafted, like Robin’s fetish table, full of rich, unexpected colors that stir the internal, private life. show less

Three stories; a favorite author, a favorite artist. AS Byatt pulled me in for each one, but let me go too soon, which is why I am not a short story fan. Now I have to go and look at a book of Matisse's paintings to satisfy my longing.

I fell head over heels in love with A.S. Byatt when I read Possession: A Romance 15 years ago in one holiday weekend in which I did almost nothing else but read. Since then, I've made it a point to gather together everything Byatt has written, and I'm parceling her work out to myself in doses, so I don't run out too soon. The Matisse Stories, in my hardcover edition is a lovely little book, pleasant to hold in the hand, printed on heavy cream paper with line drawings to illustrate the stories which are, after all, ekphrastic in nature, that is, about artworks in one way or another. The three stories in this book are all saturated with color, as are Matisse's paintings, so that one can almost see them, and all are about middle-aged woman show more coping. My favorite of the three stories is "Art Work," in which a family is surprised by their cleaning lady -- but each story is a little art work, crafted with the kind of care Matisse took with his paintings. Get your hands on this one. show less

A collection of three short stories, each one resolves around a Matisse painting, by the author of the award- winning book, 'Possession.' One story deals with a hair salon, another with professors, sexual harassment and a student who hates Matisse, but the one that stood out to me was called 'Art Work.' The story introduces us to a family and their inimitable cleaning lady. Debbie, her artistic husband and her kids depend on their cleaning lady to keep their house running smoothly, but she has secrets of her own that they know nothing about. The collection is small, but interesting and it made me look up more paintings and information about Matisse himself, even though he is only a peripheral part of the book.

My glibly tossed five stars register an exquisite afternoon as much as this collection of three jewels from Dame Byatt. All three caught me unexpected. Medusa's Ankle's recalled the lead story in [b:Pulse|8608089|Pulse|Julian Barnes|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1329249410s/8608089.jpg|13478360] by Julian Barnes, though I could be mistaken, perhaps I am thinking of [b:The Lemon Table|37585|The Lemon Table|Julian Barnes|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348544886s/37585.jpg|1933757]. Oh well the self-awareness was piercing. Art Work is brillaintly realized work, one which may have been a marvelous novel. The Chinese Lobster likewise was transportive, though it was more whispered verse than anything monumental.

A S Byatt or Dame Antonia Susan Duffy (née Drabble; she's Margaret's sister) 1936-2023 was an English critic, novelist, poet and short-story writer, popular in the nineties. Raised a Quaker she herself lived as an agnostic. I'd never read anything by her but attracted by the lovely cover of this hardback book I bought it somewhere some years ago (it came out in 1993) and I have recently read the three stories it contains. It's proper literature in that it not only tells a story but makes you think about life. There is humour in each story - enough to make you smile not to belly laugh. She clearly was a very skilled writer and perhaps merits more investigation.