Matisse s'explique en 1907: un manuscrit inédit de l'artiste, conservé par Apollinaire

This chapter presents a transcription and discussion of a previously unpublished manuscript by Henri Matisse, written in the summer of 1907 at the request of his old friend the philosopher and art critic Mecislas Golberg. Matisse divided the manuscript into three sections, headed Éducation, Recherche de ma personnalité and Les Influences, summarising his artistic beginnings, his evolution and the art and artists who influenced him. It is the earliest written statement by Matisse and it prefigures his famous "Notes d'un peintre", published in December 1908. Golberg was too ill to make anything of Matisse's manuscript, so he passed it to Apollinaire. This chapter shows how Apollinaire used the manuscript and supplemented it with information taken from his conversations with the artist in order to write, in dialogue form, his essay "Henri Matisse", published in La Phalange dated 15 December 1907. That article, of which Matisse kept a manuscript in Apollinaire's hand, served as a starting point and even a blueprint for Matisse's own later publications and declarations. The Matisse manuscript and conversations with the artist allowed Apollinaire to clarify his appreciation of the aims and achievements of contemporary art and to bring a new critical acuity to his best writings on art.