I stumbled onto a nice YouTube video called Chatting With Henri Matisse: The Lost 1941 Interview. In it Tyler Green interviews Serge Guilbaut, a favorite writer of mine, so I spent some time with it. It turns out that the “lost interview” was a 1941 book-length interview with Henri Matisse that was never published because Matisse, in the end, rejected it. Luckily the lost interview was finally published in 2013.[i]

To be honest, I’m not crazy about Matisse’s work; in some ways he’s like Picasso for me. I certainly can recognize the authority in their work. They are true masters, but I’m not especially moved. However, what does excite me about the both of them is this: they are both absolutely brilliant when they talk about what it means to be an artist. So I ordered “Chatting” and was not disappointed.

Here’s the thing: when I articulate what it means to be an artist (as I was taught and as I have since come to believe), I’m often perceived as a curmudgeon, too political or critical, or worse, airy-fairy. For example, one of my favorite concepts and one that I eagerly proselytize is that of “becoming.” By this I mean that the activity of painting ought not to be driven by external rewards (sales, prizes, or pleasing everyone from friends, lovers, and the endless army of gate-keepers that make up the art system); instead painting as an activity ought to be an unfolding, a discovery and expression of who we are most. Cèzanne and Monet, to site obvious examples, became who they were most by the end of their lives but only because they were free, for the most part, from the army of gate-keepers who normally direct and control the careers of artists for purposes of their own.

Now listen to Matisse articulate the same view. He explains that it was at the ripe old age of 21 that he was given a paint box and “the moment I had that paint box in my hands, I felt that this was my life. Like a cow given a sight of grass….” What a nice way of saying that he was not just discovering who he was but who he was most. The paint box, like grass for a cow, was something he needed to become Matisse.

Regarding the need to be free from gate-keepers, Matisse continues:

“You must come out by your own means….to express that sense of falling head over heels for a thing…to express the impact the object made on [you]….I understood…that I had no business painting to please other people….If [a painter] is concerned with success, he works with just the one idea: pleasing people and selling. He loses the support of his own conscience and is dependent on how others are feeling. He neglects his gifts and eventually loses them….[painters painting for prizes] were lost souls….they were studying…how to win medals….the great failing…was that the students thought technique so important…”

Inveighing against the tendency of painters to use words to explain what they wish to say with paint, Matisse told his students: “Listen: do you want to paint? Well start by having your tongue cut out because from now on you should express yourselves only with the brush.” Smart guy!

And how might an artist view the art market? “The public is not the buyer: the public is the sensitive material on which you hope to leave an imprint….If you work for others, you never get anywhere….” Okay, got it: one must become who one is most, regardless of trends, experts, sales, and prizes. In fact, all the expert-directors out there (think Charles Saatchi and Damien Hirst) “make you do” the things that get attention, but “you don’t need to feel, you don’t need to be an artist….”

And just as I was feeling validated in my ranting, I came across a letter by Kurt Vonnegut, the American novelist, that really nailed it for me. It seems that Vonnegut, was invited to speak at a high school, but given his age and infirmities, he wrote a letter instead. It read, in part:

“Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow (emphasis in the original).

“Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood [the high school teacher]….Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.

“Here’s an assignment…. Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net…. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody….

“Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash receptacles. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.”

Oh, the insights of these two. I liked the part about the “net,” suggesting that art requires structure. To the “young British artists” – directed at every turn, or artists like Warhol whose ambition was to be as rich and glamorous as his jet-set pals, there’s no “need to feel,” no “need to be an artist.” And to the throngs of art students in higher education, compelled to make the most superficial social commentary with their work, “cut your tongues out.”

Plein-air or traditional painting will never be exhibited at the Venice Biennale again. And what many of us do will be thought of as a charming anachronism, off to the side – way off – of what “important” artists do. But visual art without us, simply put, would be a mistake largely because sincerity would find no purchase.

“So it goes.”

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[i] You can find the YouTube interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOgrH9PxjCs. The book is Chatting With Henri Matisse, The lost 1941 Interview, Henri Matisse with Pierre Courthion, edited by Serge Guilbaut, published in the US and Great Britain in 2013.