Portraiture under Epoché: Matisse According to Husserl

Abstract The article considers a range of issues in Henri Matisse’s art from around 1906 through the lens of Edmund Husserl’s theory of the image: the treatment of light and color in Matisse’s Young Sailor II, his combination of image and sign in the portrait of his daughter Marguerite, and the interaction between marks and sheet in his drawings. In Matisse’s art and Husserl’s phenomenology, just what was a portrait; and what, more broadly, was the relation between a modern self and his world? The answers to these questions suggest why Husserl has become such a popular reference point for Bildwissenschaft. A century ago, Husserl and Matisse did what contemporary image culture is now doing as a matter of course. In putting their world under epoché, they experienced it by expelling themselves from it.