Cone collection dazzles at BMA

Back in Charles Village after touring the United States and Canada, the famed Cone Collection of artwork and cultural artifacts is once again on display at the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA).

Collected by Etta and Claribel Cone from 1898 to Etta's death in 1949 - and subsequently donated to the BMA - the Collection boasts more than 500 works by the famed French painter and sculptor Henri Matisse, along with numerous souvenirs, keepsakes and works by other artists from his time.

These artists are among the most famous in the world and include Van Gogh, Degas, Cezanne, Pissarro, Picasso and the sculptor Rodin. The collection is an ongoing exhibit at the BMA, so no admission is charged for entry.

This collection would not exist without the work of the Cone sisters. Independently wealthy, Claribel was a medical doctor - when few other women were - and Etta Cone was an accomplished musician, a fact that's often reflected in the musically-themed pieces she chose for the collection.

Together they amassed approximately three thousand objects in total, out of a compulsion to seek and acquire objects of beauty.

"Now that I stop to reason about it, it is silly foolishness, this collecting of things," wrote Cone, "but it must have some solid foundation - some foundation deep in the hearts of people . . . It is the craving for beauty that is such a vital function of the human soul."

Matisse was the Cone sisters' favorite artist, so it's natural that his works fill the bulk of the display space dedicated to the collection. In addition to the works themselves, a section of the Cone wing has been modeled to look like the interior of the sisters' apartment. The home of the Cones was a place in which treasured works of art covered the walls of every room and the drawers were filled with odd knick-knacks, collected to please the sisters' taste for beauty. For this reason, even if you dislike the art of Matisse or his contemporaries, the exhibit is worth a look.

The sisters did not limit themselves to art, and in this room, a visitor may examine and admire their taste in purses, jewelry, fabrics - even antique keys. The room provides an interesting way to get into the heads of the Cone sisters and, for a moment, see what it would have been like to be an independently wealthy art collector in the first half of the 20th century.

How much time one spends in the rest of the exhibit depends on how much affection one has for Matisse. His work is the focal point of the collection, and much of the other European art on display is there for the purpose of showing who influenced him and how they did it.

Matisse once said "I have always tried to hide my own efforts and wanted my work to have the lightness and joyousness of a springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors it has cost." To achieve this end, he spent hours agonizing over the canvas. The style that came of his efforts is simple but grabbing, employing large and smooth shapes expertly placed in the frame - such an effect draws in the viewer and points their attention to the work at hand.

Figures in a Matisse painting, such as the lady reclining in his renowned work, "Blue Nude," are flattened. While shading can occasionally show the viewer what the object's true form is, it is nevertheless transformed by his bold outlines and solid colors into an arrangement of two-dimensional shapes. He would sometimes use cutouts of colored construction paper to help him plan these works, and during his later years, Matisse would find ways of expressing himself solely through the use of these pieces of colored paper, without any paints at all.

While this does make his works easy to appreciate, it also strips them of some of the complexity that can make paintings rewarding. Stand by a Pissarro landscape, or by a Cezanne, both of which are on display alongside the Matisse works in the Cone wing, and see the clouds: The nearly abstracted shapes still have rough, natural edges. Pieces of white and blue paint, often specks no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence, blend with each other to produce a chaotic pattern almost as startling and unpredictable as the real clouds the artist was painting.

In Matisse's work, though, the colors are partitioned into blocks of slick paint, sometimes fenced by sharp lines of graphite. Within each block, there may be variation and nuance, causing the colors to change. But the blocks are separate from each other, and no natural haze occurs between them.

Matisse would frequently arrange his studio specifically for each painting, drawing only from his own vision. His compositions are masterpieces of arrangement, immediately conveying what he envisioned to the person standing before the work.

While they are admittedly geometrically beautiful, though, the simplicity prevents them from achieving the depth that many of his contemporaries did.

His sculptures, however, are fascinating for their roughness. Bronze is a harder material to control than paint or graphite on canvas, subject as it is to the effects of light, shadow and the natural color of the metal.

His distinctive style is retained, yet by bringing these new elements into play, his sculptures are even harder to stop admiring.

On top of that, his brilliant sense for pose and arrangement is even stronger when working in three dimensions.

Regardless of whether one likes Matisse ?- or even modern art in general - a trip to see the Cone Collection at the BMA is time well spent. The interior look into the Cone sisters' lives and the magnitude of the collection ensure it, and don't forget: it costs nothing to visit.