MATISSE AT THE MET

Yesterday I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the Matisse: The Fabric of Dreams--His Art and His Textiles exhibition. I was blown away, particularly by his use of color. I think he might displace Van Gogh as my favorite "modern" artist.

It was amazing to see the actual textiles and garments that Henri Matisse used on his models and for his backgounds. Matisse's family had been in the textile industry in northeastern France for generations, and he grew up with fabrics, not fine art. It was said that he probably never saw an oil painting until he was 20 years old. He collected fabrics and garments all his life. When he died in 1955 the collection was packed away, not to see the light of day until last year.

But it was even more amazing to see how he presented them in his pictures. They were never literal representations, and sometimes were very much different. For instance, the Ottoman robe on the left became the one on the right. In fact there was another painting of the robe that had even wider stripes.

At the end of his life and mostly bed-ridden, Matisse found a different medium with which to use color: he took a pair of scissors and made cut-outs of paper that had been painted with solid hues, and then attached them to similarly colored backgrounds. He found great freedom in not having to use a brush to invoke a color. At the left is his "Acrobatic Dancer." While the relationship to fabrics is more distant here, this medium did resemble some of the fabrics he had collected from Africa and the South Pacific, where layering was used.

The exhibition will be there through the 25th. Catch it if you can, especially if you love colors. If you're watching your pennies you can skip the audio guide. It only adds a few things to the posted explanations, and probably everything is in the catalogue. There are many copies to view in the reading room.