Matisse's Later Years: Les Odalisques and the Other as Object

Odalisque with Gray Trousers (1927)

Nude Lying on Back (1927)

In his early years, Matisse engaged with African art at the level of the artist, seeking to partake in a non-Western mode of seeing to achieve levels of abstraction present in African sculpture by his own means. Though Matisse's approach was reductive in that it relied on singular view of Africa, it was distinguishable from Orientalism, the primary interaction with Africa in art at his time. 

Orientalism as a type of painting depicted the Western imagination of the non-Western world, engaging with 'the Other' as a decorative aesthetic rather than the culture of a human community. This aesthetic could either exist in the context of its origin, such as in a painting of a Moroccan market scene, or completely removed from this context, such as the depiction of a white figure wearing an ‘oriental’ costume or sitting next to an ‘exotic’ tablecloth.

Although Matisse's early works took a technique-oriented approach to the question of the other, his late works regressed to dehumanizing Orientalism. Following a 1912 trip to Morocco, Matisse became preoccupied with the subject of odalisques, or racialized caricatures of harem slaves or concubines. Many of Matisse's odalisques were French models who were dressed in 'exotic' items he collected and in no way reflected the reality of a woman in a harem, a space Matisse could have never entered.