Spotted in Nylon Mag: art-inspired manicures by artist Jin Soon Choi!

A love letter to Matisse’s La Conversation (The Conversation)

Hafiz says “Art is a conversation between lovers”
You are definitely talking to me. When I see you, there is a little gasp inside me and sometimes when I turn a corner you stop my in my track, and I gasp out loud.
I love you.

See more love letters to works of art and write one yourself!

Happy birthday to Henri Matisse, born 143 years ago today!

You’ve likely seen many paintings by Matisse, but have you ever looked closely at his drawings? For Henri Matisse, drawing was an intimate medium, a means of capturing the fleeting gestures and emotions of both subject and artist.  He made drawings to work out problems of structure and composition for subsequent works. Matisse viewed printmaking as an extension of drawing, and would turn to printmaking after extended periods of painting, as if to digest his experience through the use of a new medium.  Between the years of 1900 and 1954, Matisse created more than 800 prints!

Image: Henri Matisse, Fée au chapeau de clarté, Souvenir du Mallarmé (Fairy in a Luminous Hat, Souvenir of Mallarmé), as viewed through Artscope.

chromaticattic:

Femme au chapeau (or, Woman with a Hat) by Henri Matisse, 1905.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

One of my favorite paintings I saw today. I really like, and am fascinated with, Matisse’s use of vivid colors and his eclectic color palette. The subject of Femme au chapeau is his wife, Amélie. 

Learn a whole bunch about Matisse’s Femme au chapeau in this interactive feature!

cpinart:

Henri Matisse - Laurette in a pink chair; 1917.

Creating a color palette from a painting seems like a pretty fabulous idea! If you could instantly redecorate one room in your home using the color palette of a famous work of art, what room/artwork would you choose?

You can use this handy color palette generator to experiment with different works of art.

(Feel free to go all out and show us what you’d do using our submit page!)

Home at last! After traveling with The Steins Collect to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Grand Palais in Paris, our beloved Woman with a Hat and The Girl with Green Eyes are going back on view today! Welcome home, ladies :)

allisfairgame:

Woman with a Hat by Henri Matisse. Marsden Hartley was a painter who did not stick to any one particular style. That sounds great in theory but when you try to figure out how to artistically classify him, it gets really messy and complicated. One artist that I can say definitely inspired this American artist was Henri Matisse. This work shows a bleeding and layering of colors that gradually becomes more apparent in Hartley’s later pieces.

Interesting thoughts! See Matisse’s Femme au chapeau on our website here. Learn more about this piece in our interactive feature (which is really FUN) here!

Matisse sculpting in his apartment (1951) with 2 black cats at his feet.

(via TYWKIWDBI)

A love letter written to a work of art that has slipped out of view:

Themes and Variations (Series L, variation 9) 

As a  young kid I was overwhelmed by “The Parakeet” and the name Matisse was synonym to joy and colour to me. In my hometown Amsterdam, “The Parakeet” was on display again after living in depot for far too long. The canary and the siren’s song in this work brightened my view on life and struck my heart again, it felt like coming home and enjoying the presence of this work again made me realize how much I missed that.

Last summer I met earlier work and was absolutely smitten by what I believe to be “Themes and Variations (Series L, variation 9)”. Seemingly simple lines projected not only a face of a woman but displayed love. Love for life, love for the model and most of all, love for your work. You showed me that an artist like you can create new life, with incredibly few lines. 

I wanted to take a picture because I saw you on my holiday and knew I had to live without you soon. It was forbidden by a guard so when I finally had to part, I was adamant to return to  see you again before leaving for Amsterdam. This exhibition would come to Paris, your home, but probably without this small gem

In the bookstore I found your description in a catalogue and made sure to memorize your title by heart. 

I missed my last opportunity to see you again and now I live with the brightness and warmth of the memory of meeting you, hoping to see you again eventually. Henri Matisse, with Themes and Variations (Series L, variations 9) you shaped my life, again.

wiblog:

I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me. - Henri Matisse

(via MoMA)

Nice quote from Matisse.

For those of you who listen to NPR, you may have heard the Stein feature today on Morning Edition. With The Steins Collect now on view in Paris, Steinmania has spread across the globe! Listen to the full story here: For Gertrude Stein, Collecting Art Was A Family Affair : NPR

(On another note, how amazing is the above photo? It’s Matisse painting the infamous Portrait of Michael Stein, with Michael sitting in the background.)