The Red Studio, Autodesk Maya, 2021–2026
DSGN 235 3-D Computer Modeling
Painted during the fall of 1911 in Issy-les-Moulineaux, a commune in suburban Paris, 2021 marked the 110th anniversary of Matisse’s original Red Studio, which the Museum of Modern Art commemorated in 2022 with an exhibition bringing together most of the artworks seen in the painting. A gallery label for the painting from the Museum of Modern Art observes that “[t]he composition's central axis is a grandfather clock without hands—it is as if, in the oasis of the artist's studio, time were suspended.”
This interpretation of The Red Studio explores that suspension of time by imagining the painting as an interstitial space, both figuratively and literally within Matisse’s oeuvre; works not painted by Matisse until a few years after 1911 can be found in the left-hand corner of the room, where in the original exist only nondescript swathes of blue in frames.
The original rendering of the painting was initially created in 2021, after which it was updated and touched up using 3D scans taken of the actual artworks in the painting shown at the MoMA exhibit.
Fig 1. Side-by-side comparison of rendering and original painting
Fig 2. Side-by-side comparison of touched-up rendering updated with artwork from the MoMA exhibition (left, 2026) and original rendering (right, 2021)
Fig 3. Elevation rendering of the painting's back wall showing the true relative scales of objects, revealing that the tablecloth on the painting's bottom left might not actually be draped over a table, given its lower height.
Fig 4. Detail of the two sculptures in the back right of the painting; updated with 3D-scans from the Museum of Modern Art
Fig 5. Detail of elevation rendering
The red Chinoiserie wallpaper dates back to 1910 and is French in origin, while the plate on the bottom left as well as the rightmost painting both use the original artworks created by Matisse as mapped textures.
With the exception of the large painting by the window, all the art displayed in Matisse's original work still exist today in varied collections and museums. Just as the imagined room constructs a three-dimensional space between the viewer and the contents of the studio, so too is the viewer placed between works created by Matisse both before and after 1911, as well as works both here today and lost to history—as if time were suspended.
Everything you see in this 3D rendering was modeled from scratch in Autodesk Maya, aside from the artworks scanned at the MoMA exhibition.
Works Cited
Matisse, Henri. The Red Studio. 1911. MoMA, moma.org/collection/works/78389.
Pogrebin, Robin. “A Deep Dive Into Matisse’s ‘The Red Studio’.” The New York Times, 12 Sept. 2021, nytimes.com/2021/09/12/arts/design/matisse-studio-painting-moma-.html.
© 2026 Victor Li