The Big Bright.

Dear Unhampered,


Matisse, I'd always been told, worked on these cut-paper pieces because he had diminishing eyesight, and it was easier for him to see these bold, high contrast forms.  I love this story very much, and I hope that no two-bit biographer ever comes along to tell me that he really made them because he suffered from schizophrenia.  Which isn't to say that I'd mind him having schizophrenia, but it is to say that the story of an artist continuing their work, no matter what was lost or diminished is a good story, a story that makes a person feel good about their paltry doodling efforts.  However, a story of making things because some kind of illness or hardship compels a person to, or worse, that the illness or physical reality is the actual 'creative' part of a person's output, leaving the artist/author as some kind of puppet dancing from a string of madness or disease, is just another one of those cliché tales of people who win things in spite of the odds.  I don't care much for those kind of stories, because it forces the listener into a distant corner of pity.

Enjoy this short film of Matisse wielding his scissors and may you stay unhampered by stories that explain and muffle, prove and trample, explicate and narrow.






Henri Matisse: Paper Cut Outs from DERTV on Vimeo.







PS

Here's another little something: The Big Bright.