JEANNETTE (III)
HENRI MATISSE, 1911
Check these out. Start over here on the end, with the one that still looks like a person, and walk down the row. First one's fine. Real face, soft. That's Jeanne Vaderin. She'd been sick, came out here to get better, sat for the local painter. Nice, normal thing. Next one, still her. A little firmer, but yeah, you'd know her on the street. And then, watch what happens. Third one, it goes stiff. Fourth's heavier, blunter, mostly shape at this point. And the fifth. Okay. Look at the fifth. One eye's just a glob. Nose is a blade. There's something growing off the side of her head. From the right angle the whole thing's basically a bronze maraca. Sorry, Jeanne. But he hasn't lost the plot. This is the plot. Matisse used to say exactitude isn't truth. Which, okay. Copying her isn't the same as catching her. So he quits copying her. He puffs up one feature, sharpens the next, files another down to nothing. Five different cracks at her over six years, like he's trying to figure out which wrong one's the right one. And here's the part you can't really prove. The further he gets from her actual face, the more she kind of shows up. By the last one there's barely any Jeanne left, and somehow she's all there. He stopped at five. But stand here long enough and you can't help it. You start wondering what a sixth one would've looked like. How much further he could've pushed her and still kept her in there. Honestly, you kind of wish he'd kept going.