The Mirage of Matisse

We went with my parents today to the Museum of Modern Art's visiting exhibit on Matisse. This probably demonstrates my woeful lack of art history skills, but I had no idea that Matisse was such a revisionist in his art. And no, I don't mean that he revised the rules of what 'art' was (although he did) -- what I mean is that he literally painted over and over on the same canvas. He'd move people over slightly, create background and then change it, and in some cases complete scenes that he would then entirely paint over. A prime example of this is the 'View of Notre Dame.' The picture on the left is the original painting; the one on right is the final version. The new version paints over the old with a blue background, but glimpses of the original are still faintly visible.


At first I found this painting annoying - the first one seemed much more detailed and more 'interesting,' at least in the obvious sense that there was more going on visually. But as I perused through the multiple gallery rooms of Matisse's work, I began to appreciate his desire to keep improving and keep molding his original canvases. If I was an artist, I probably would have tossed the canvas and started over, but Matisse recognized that a piece of art is a journey, and each phase should be appreciated and remembered rather than covered over completely or thrown in the garbage.

This seems much like life to me. We often hear it described as a journey, but it is also not that simple... not that linear. I think we are all much like Matisse's canvases... colorful and flawed; people who learn and change and continue through life. But through it all, we retain memories and traces of colors from our previous stages/experiences.

The pitfall of looking at Matisse is that at first you only see the top layer. You have to look closely and really carefully inspect the work to see the layers of paint underneath. This cursory "I glimpsed and what I saw on top must be all that's there" attitude is unfortunately common, and a recurring pitfall among both politicians and the media/reform bills surrounding the financial crisis. The easy thing to see is Wall Street -- blame the fat cat bankers who only cared about profits and drove the country into the ground. Well, yes, bankers certainly hold their share of blame. But underneath this obvious scapegoat are myriad other parties at fault hiding behind the bankers. The mortgage issuers who earned commission per loan and didn't care who they issued them too. The people who took out the loans, knowing they wouldn't be able to afford the payments. The lawyers who wrote wording for the mortgage contracts that was so complex and convoluted that no one could really understand what they were signing. And even partly the government, who put LIBOR near zero, essentially offering the banks free money to use however they wanted (and use it they did). So are the bankers to blame? Partly, yes. But like Matisse there are many more hidden factors at play.