Matisse In The Air- It Ain’t Just Cutting Out Dollies
By Phil Larkin
Hey, I have been on the West Coast for a while so if you want to say long time no see go right ahead. While I was on the Left Coast (since we are deep into the cold civil war that my old friend and political commentator here Frank Jackman has been fuming about for the better part of the last two years and has even made a something of a believer out of non-political me) I attended a Matisse Exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (in a new downtown building very nice and spacious) coupled with a protégé of sorts the American artist Richard Diebenkorn. Very interesting to see the influence of the older artist on the younger before the younger man branched out on his own into more abstract expression works. (According to the captions though Diebenkorn always kept a little something of that Matisse influence right to the end of his life in 1993).
Lo and behold I no sooner get back to Boston and they are having a Matisse retrospective centered on his studio work (should be studios since he had several one patched up one due to a guy named Hitler who was eventually put paid to and none too soon). Call me nothing but an unpaid shill for the guy or maybe for the museum but you should check this out before it leaves the Museum of Fine Arts on July 9th of this year.
(This is no foolish plea either we were supposed to go to Matisse exhibit at MoMa back in, I think, 1993 when we were on the East Coast except the day we had the tickets for it snowed like hell and we couldn’t get to New York and thereafter not before the show closed. So twenty-five years later we have an embarrassment of riches with two shows. Nice but don’t you wait.)
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