Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Quick Hopper and Sacred Matisse

A quick 8x10 pastel of the Hopper view.

Pierre Schneider in his book on Matisse repeatedly makes the case that Matisse is a painter of the sacred, a religious artist: In Notes of a Painter, he speaks of "my religious awe towards life." Elsewhere in the same text, he stresses the identity of the impression experienced and the pictorial expression. It is not to misrepresent Matisse to say that here he is glimpsing a religious art, and that he has been led to this vision by his recognition of the fact that decoration must speak and that it can speak only of one thing: the sacred.

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