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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