THE FABRICS AND DECORATIVISM OF MATISSE'S ART: A SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE TO UNDERSTAND THE PATH OF THE ARTIST'S PLASTIC PRODUCTION

Abstract

The article presents Henri Matisse's plastic experiments and concerns, related to the use
of fabrics in his painting to propose aesthetic innovations, either as a language or as a
theme, at a time when artists were fighting for an autonomy in the field of art, against an
academic art system. To understand the transformations carried out by him in modern art,

when using textile patterns to work the tension between decorative means and non-dec-
orative purposes, also, to structure a pure surface art, I sought support in the concept of

habitus from Pierre Bourdieu's sociology. Habitus in the sense of the actions of individuals
determined by their past experiences, functioning as a matrix of perceptions. In the case of

Matisse, it refers to the visual education acquired in his childhood and youth in his home-
town, enriched by his ethnographic research, when the fabrics of his existence became the

fabrics of his painting, one of his collaborations for the evolution of art of the 20th century.