Matisse at the MOMA

This Matisse caught my eye yesterday morning on the front page of the Art Section in the Sunday New York Times. An Exhibition is coming July 18th to the Museum of Modern Art. I thought how coincidental when I was just blogging about Henri the other day. I grabbed the section from Honey's carefully arranged reading pile. The article didn't interest me much--something about being able to see how the works were constructed with new technologies.

What interested me was what Matisse,(according to John Elderfield,Curator Emeritus of the Museum of Modern Art), said nearly a hundred years ago: He said it was "crucial to keep changing" his art because he didn't want to become "a prisoner of style." I have thought this too! I never wanted to paint just one way. And from what I could see around me in art classes, in galleries, everybody else was. I thought my work was all over the place and peculiar. So I put my interest in painting in the occasional hobby category and did it every now and then when the mood struck. I didn't want to paint factory style where everyday you approached the canvas with the same subject in the same way and at the end of the day everything looked like the painting you did the day before. It seemed like a boring occupation.

Henri's words were very encouraging for the exploring I'm doing now with subjects and mediums. It definitely made me put New York on our travel agenda. The bitch of New York is: three days there is as pricey as a week in Mexico--with no meals included, upgrades available, swimming pools, spas or beaches. It's a real business trip.

Nevertheless: The exhibit Matisse: Radical Inventions 1913 - 1917 runs between July 18th and October 11th. I'll need time tickets. If I time my visit right, there are also two more exhibits that I must see: Abstract Expressionist New York (Oct. 3 - Apr. 25); and Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen (Sept.15 - March 14). (This last exhibit will serve me professionally for on going educational credits from the NKBA).