Hanako’s Reviews > The Unknown Matisse, 1869-1908 > Status Update

He taught me that in order to find your own way you must sometimes overturn the critiques as in the art that you were brought up to learn. The school and authority were to preserve their own genius, but sometimes the future is so grotesque that they will never accept it, but that is the way a new way of seeing can sprout

His life was a season of criticism after criticism and disbelief of his work. But you must remain true to it
People will only flock to you for answers after you’ve made it, until when will you is the path you should undertake on your own

What strikes me most is still the amount of failure and uncertainty a revolutionary must have in its tracks. It is bizarre how unpopular his opinions are but HE STUCK TO HIS PRINCIPLES, and will be an example to the swift and hurtful comments you must take if you want to take up a path that is so different from others. It will not be a comfortable ride

This book was a bit lengthy and with immense amount of research down to detail of his past

Reading about a famous painter that I don’t yet know and about his history was inspiring, and it’s bizarre and yet supremely relatable to know that I feel the same way as he does in his younger years, and it provides a lot of faith for me as I struggle on my own path. That this struggle can lead to a place of content

He said that art should be as soothing as a good armchair

If there is order and clarity in the picture, it means that from the outset this same order and clarity existed in the mind of the painter
Or that the painter was conscious of their necessity

Perhaps even more important he had found in Picasso a rival whose phenomenally swift reactions and implacably demanding eye would challenge him to the limit
Above all he had learned to contain and channel in his work the chaotic, choking surges of ungovernable emotion that had made him a painter in the first place

For the first time in the 2 decades since he had become a painter he could propose a tentative toast to the future
However much abuse he still had to endure at the hands of the press, the public and the art establishment, he could count as always on his family, especially his wife and daughter

Relative affluence had not changed the family priorities