Matisse, Le Coeur
Matisse, Le Coeur (The Heart), photo from The National Galleries of Scotland Matisse is one of my favorite artists, and I have long been especially enthralled with his cut-outs, a body of work made late in life, when he was unable to paint or sculpt. I went to New York last fall to see the big exhibit of his cut-outs at MoMA, which was superb. So I've known this body of work for a long time, but still, I was stopped in my tracks at an exhibit in my college's library of the portfolio edition of Jazz . I had seen individual pages before, but not so many laid out. When I turned a corner and saw the image above, I started crying. I usually find heart images overly sentimental, but this one calls out to me. Something about the asymmetry of the heart, and its pairing with strong rectilinear shapes. When I showed the image to David, he also started, and said it reminded him of Regret , my quilt that uses a somewhat similar shape. A few years ago, I a...