Matisse. Unplugged. And uncovered after 70 years.

From Henri Matisse: The Lost Interview:

On August 5th 1946, two years after Paris was liberated from the Germans, a young American soldier named Jerome Seckler visited Henri Matisse. Seckler had a passion for modern art. He made it his mission to meet with, and interview, some of the leading French artists of the time: Matisse was on his list…The interview reveals Jerome to be keenly interested and articulate in the art of time, and Matisse to be a spirited foil to Seckler’s germane questioning. The transcript has been sitting neatly filed in a cardboard box for almost seventy years. Until now this interview has never been published.

Here’s one of my favorite Matisse quotes from the interview:

I think that art must not be a disagreeable thing. There is enough unhappiness in life to turn one towards the joy. One should keep the disagreeable, the unhappiness to himself. One can always find a pleasant thing. An unhappiness doesn’t remain. It makes experience. One doesn’t need to infect people with his annoyances. One should make a serene thing. One should make a stimulating art which leads the spirit of the spectator into a domain which puts him outside of his annoyances.

If you want a short cut to my favorites, and there are a lot of them, here are the links and a teaser to Matisse’s responses:

Commitment: I am not at ease. (My favorite. Must read.)
Peer Appreciation: Picasso was stunned into silence. “We sat there like stones,” Gilot later recalled. (Picasso and Gilot watching him make cut-outs)
Soul: Those who will work with their soul, and the desire to express themselves will come out the best painters.
Critics: It is the result that counts. When I am very much criticized by a painter, I’ll say to him, put your work beside mine and we will see.
Talent: You can have all the strength, if you do not have the gifts you will not arrive…
Passion: Why make me make different things. I get into communication with nature. Why look elsewhere?
Art Appreciation: A man with money will appreciate a painting for the price but the man in the street will just like the painting because he will feel it is good even if he doesn’t know why.
Art, like Music: All music is made with seven notes. With that, one makes all the relations. Painting is the same.
Revolution: Myself also I live a continual revolution.
Approval: A chef doesn’t have to always ask for approval and to ask people to taste the plates that he prepares.
Desire: All the artists who began by being hungry and cold have made good painting.
Passion / Love: One must suffer for what one loves.