THE GREAT MATISSE:
2010
We go to bed at 2am after having eaten a little more cheese, drunk a little more wine, all in the service of getting over the 5hr time difference, which had made us wake up at 11am yesterday. And then we wake up at 6.30am, just like in Rio. But we struggle up, fix breakfast (lots of coffee!) and go to work on our different projects, both still in our pajamas. Around 11am we take our baths and go out into the cool rainy Paris Autumn day. Our goal is to find my old haunts in Marais, and we saunter past the crowded Notre Dame, where a tall slender Japanese model in purple hotpants and furry boots is being filmed with a black hip-hop type wearing crazy glasses (Why next to the Notre-Dame????). The Jewish Memorial at the end of the Ile de la Cité is closed, probably for security reasons, so we continue across the little bridge to the Ile St. Louis, where we stop for a much needed coffee. On the way we encounter several charming dogs, including a beautiful old fox terrier, walking slowly with her tail down. Then we continue into the maze of little streets, passing clumps of high-school students smoking cigarettes outside the Lycées, and little children being walked home by their parents. We’ve decided to lunch near Place des Vosges, and find a suitable place with a prix fixe to our liking: pasta with a tall glass of cold beer + café. Stopping briefly to get a macaroon each for dessert (quatre euros, s’il vous plaît!), we then follow the many signs to the Musée Picasso, an old palais at the northern end of Marais, and are very surprised to find it closed, with a big notice, which begins like this: We MUST inform you that due to renovations the museum will remain closed until 2012. Could they not have announced this earlier somehow? Oh well. We continue on to the Centre Pompidou, where we ascend the futuristic escalators to the 5th floor
, home to treasures like Matisse, Picasso, Delaunay, and so on. On the walkway outside we discover the most beautiful view of the Paris rooftops against the rain laden grey skies. We walk around the exhibition until our backs give out and then make our way home to rest and do a little more work. Later it is raining and we feel lazy about going out for dinner and fix a little meal of eggs, cheese and salad in our own kitchen, with a little wine, of course, followed by some Amorino ice cream, of which we now have a providential stash in our freezer.
MARAIS AND POMPIDOU
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Text from the plaque next to the painting:
In Spring 1921, Matisse rented an apartment in Nice, overlooking the flower market, and furnished his new studio so that he could have his model [here Henriette Darricarrière] pose against a recomposable background, with interchangeable lengths of fabric hanging behind a rug-covered dais accessorized with cushions and screens. The ‘ornamental ground’ to the Decorative Figure is provided by one of these hangings, while the naked figure has only a white sheet. The contrast of figure and ground was for Matisse a favored embodiment of the opposed principles of realism and decoration, the tension he establishes between these being fundamental to his painting. The illusion of space before this flowered curtain provides the depth into which to insert the naked figure, rendered like a sculpture, Matisse exploiting color, light and shade to suggest relief.
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