Q & A with Charles Miller, author.

Please join The Friends of St Helen's Church and The Rotary Club of Abingdon for a talk and discussion, led by The Revd Charles Miller, Team Rector of Abingdon, on his latest book: "The Spiritual Adventure of Henri Matisse".

Wednesday, 10th April
7.30 pm
St Helen’s Church, (South Aisle)
West St Helen St,
Abingdon OX14 5BT

Please submit questions for discussion beforehand if possible. Please send questions to: rector@sthelens-abingdon.org.uk

All welcome, no need to book. Wine and nibbles will be served. Entry for
Friends of St Helen's and Rotary members is free, donations invited from non-members.

The Revd Charles writes:

The Spiritual Adventure of Henri Matisse

During the last phase of his long life a change occurred in France's greatest twentieth-century artist, Henri Matisse (1869-1954).

From his life-long lack of interest in Christian faith and practice he turned
and devoted himself to an all-consuming programme of religious art. The
result was the Dominican Chapel of the Rosary of Our Lady in the hill-top
town of Vence, about 20 kilometres from Nice in south-eastern France.

Why the change in the old man? And how did the artist bring decades of experimentation and radical innovation in modern art to the decoration of a sacred space for a basically conservative religious community steeped in tradition?

Since its opening in 1951 there have been numerous books about what many know as 'Matisse's Chapel'. Interesting and in some cases insightful, they have left out consideration of the man himself and the spiritual dimension of what Matisse called his 'second life', that is, the fourteen years from 1941 until his death.

Saved from death once in 1941 the artist was sharply aware of his mortality but was conscious that he still had much to say to the world through his art. What would he say?

From that creative period of his sunset years Henri Matisse is best known for his famous 'cutouts' or découpage. (In 2006 the Tate Modern hosted an exhibition simply entitled 'The Cut-Outs' which drew large crowds.) But beneath and around that bright, inventive step in his art a new Henri Matisse was taking shape. The new design owed nothing to dexterity with
scissors but rather to a young Dominican sister and the needs of the community in Vence of which she was a part, the Congregation of the Most Holy Rosary of Our Lady. It was both the artist's sense of debt to God for his 'second life' and a shared experience of vocation which bound Matisse and the Dominican sisters in a project of architecture, art and design. It stands today in all its original, simple purity as a witness to Henri Matisse's spiritual adventure and to the creative potentials which even in old age gave the artist 'eyes of fire'.

In my illustrated talk I will share how my spiritual approach to Matisse's 'second life' came about.