Henri Matisse hails from the distinctly French tradition of the painter-poet whose creative output (as well as personal and professional life) was inextricably linked with literature and writers. In Kathryn Brown’s clear-eyed and discerning study <i>Matisse's Poets</i>, the artist’s collaborative book ventures serve as a fascinating lens through which to examine Matisse’s relationship to literature and writers. Using the metaphor of the stage, Brown defines Matisse’s artists’ books as an effective space where the painter could perform his role not only as illustrator but also as reader, critic, and artist acutely aware of his public image. As such, each chapter in this well-researched and amply illustrated study shows how Matisse self-consciously engaged with literary works by authors as diverse as Stéphane Mallarmé, Henry de Montherlant, Charles Baudelaire, Pierre de Ronsard, James Joyce, Tristan Tzara, among others, to produce and extend his own pictorial language as well as to position himself as a sophisticated reader of both the literary canon and the avant-garde. Brown therefore rightly places Matisse’s artists’ books within a broad matrix of concerns that allows her to go beyond conventional text-image analyses to include the social and political valences of Matisse’s creative and strategic decisions in his diverse publishing projects. The interdisciplinary framework of <i>Matisse's Poets</i> will attract literary critics as well as art historians and scholars of media and book history. Its lucid prose and finely tuned arguments will make it a useful tool for teaching as well as scholarly research.

Anna Sigrídur Arnar, Professor of Art History, Minnesota State University Moorhead, USA

This is a remarkable book ... [with] a wide range of new aspects and dimensions.

Leonardo Reviews