I'm not always sure how I feel about Matisse, and the surrounding hooplah. I mean, he draws a confident line. And of course, he was innovative and avant-garde and I do enjoy a lot of his works, but there's also a large portion that fail to inspire me. It's just kind of that Matisse style over and over again with nothing behind it. And I got especially jaded when I was reading a book about his cut-outs, and it had all these typical philosophical quotes by the artist like, "cut-outs are the window into the soul" and "each time you cut away the paper, you enter a new layer of perception," and actually I'm totally making those up, but it was enough to make me to roll my eyes, shut the book, and say "Oh, Matisse."
So that's just the current stage of cynicism I'm in with him, and really, I shouldn't say anything that I'll regret because nobody knows anything anyway, whether it's me or Matisse, and it's nice that he brought more color into the world and I'm just jealous because at the moment I'm incapable of doing the same. On another note, it was fun to see some of his earliest works, which were basically indistinguishable from any other (talented) French art student's of the time- still-lifes, landscapes, portraits of dead martyrs.
So that was the Matisse museum, and once I got back to the hostel I made friends with a Turkish pop star and we went to go get delicious Indian food and there were hilarious Bollywood music videos and lots of wine and later, a live blues/rock and roll band, so all in all, from the run along the hillside to Chagall and Matisse and wandering and archaeological ruins, to Indian food and wine and live blues, it was basically my perfect day and I was truly sad to see it end!
Ah well... on to the next!
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