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WPCNR DAYLIGHT RAMBLER. Aesthetics & Comment by John F. Bailey. July 5, 2022:

I went back to the Museum of Modern Art in gloriously alive New York City, USA  yesterday with Brenda Starr  my cultural attache’ to see the Henri Matisse exhibition.

It was a glorious day in the Greatest City in the World as WABC’S Ron Lundy used to call it (when WABC 77 was MusicRadio and made you happy).

 Parking on 51^st Street we walked crosstown in the “lived in” chaos- glory rolling in front of us and soaring around us of New York City where the vain the profane and the gets-into-you humanity in all its one-and-many-and-all kinds amazes the senses. New York makes you alive and makes your heart beat.

Entering MOMA now overlooked by a “supertall” ascending into the sky overlooking a art deco residence with circular terraces which is amazing to see, we entered the echoing big white entrance and ascended to the third floor where the Matisse exhibition is. It is there until September.

Henri Matisse is the Post-Impressionist pioneer  of  1911 in which from his Red Studio in Montparnesse he created in-your-face jagged color shapes projecting jarring assaulting the observer with images that jump out at you, new art for his time, yet still as new as it was when he painted them.

The original paintings you see here in the painting below took art from the realism and dreamlike beauty of the Impressionists to visuals that that assault and draw you in to the humanity of the individual, the vibrance of the real persons he painted in “The Red Studio.”

His most famous painting is on display in an interactive gallery. Mr. Matisse felt it was his best work, but his Russian patron, Sergei Shchukin, whom he presented it to, did not like it. You can read the correspondence with the patron in the MOMA exhibit. Reading between the lines, Matisse who felt it was his best work, eventually sold the painting to the Gargoyale Club in London, where it hung in the bar.

The Gargoyle Club was the “City Limits” of London, the “21 Club” of the upper class London crowd at the time. Eventually the owner of the Gargoyle Club wanted to sell the painting back to Mr. Matisse, but the painting, a heartbreak for Matisse, he did not want back. The work when displayed in New York  with other of his  paintings became the sensation of the art world in New York. Even then, if could make it in New York you could make it anywhere.

When I saw “The Red Studio” painting yesterday it drew me into itself and radiated the creative life, the atmosphere which so inspired Mr. Matisse.

Every work of art does that to you if you let it , and “The Red Studio” lights up this tastefully displayed exhibition of Mr. Matisse’s works in a distanced way from the “Red Studio” where Mr. Matisse created them so they like so many different children of the artist’s brush strokes  stood apart on their own.

I do not know if this was the studio’s intent, but the curator/designers of this exhibit have not crowded the works but set them apart but together reminiscent of a “cocktail party of paintings” holding court and working the effervescent essence of these forerunners of realism.

“The Red Studio” will work on you the viewer with a magic “reach out” visual, emotion rush of what a creative space does for the artist.  The painting includes pictures in it of works Matisse painted in the studio of red walls. It is an amazing creative concept.

What MOMA has done is they have analyzed the painting and discovered an amazing thing about how the painting was created. Through the magic of electronic devices that can “see” into a painting MOMA’s curators and analysts and painting reseachers explain in a video how “The Red Studio” was created.

Analysis done when the painting was reframed showed it originally had not been red. It had been green, yellow and sundry shades, essentially a painting of the room Matisse worked. The video showing the analysts telling what their analytical technology revealed to them was that Matisse considered his finished work, then in a sense the painting inspired him to make a drastic change.

The analysts said Matisse painted around the original paintings and objects in the painting with red.

They said the brush strokes applying the red were firm, broad, splashed and what can be described as quick saturating strokes.

What I drew from this is the  power of the creativity within Mr. Matisse  took over, gave him the idea to add the power “red” to the painting which actually was the color of his real studio.

That revelation revealed by not an autopsy but an examination of the “living painting” that delivered the spirit of the artist, the audacity, adding a major change to the painting not knowing whether or not it would be great or would ruin his work.

That filled me with wonder.

“The Red Studio” exhibition of this audacity of the artist, (and every artist has this), delivered to me the value of art we sometimes forget.

The last painting Matisse ever did was another portrait of his studio. This is it below. I felt this showed how much Mr. Matisse realized what the original “Red Studio” meant to him.

Art is there to remind us of the unlimited capacity for creativity, and higher judgment we possess whether we paint, write build.

“The Red Studio” became famous in New York.

New York critics were just awed by it.

And modern art was born about a century ago.

I love old pictures of ruins of the past. I mourn the destruction civilizations of the past wrecked on cities of the past they had conquered, only to be discovered by future generations.

We learn from the past.

We learn from the artists of the past, people like us who tried and those who dared like Henri Matisse, as doubtful as any of us, came up with at once a painting that embodies the essence of creativity of listening to what your talent tells you to do and having confidence in it.

We learn from the past.

F. Scott Fiztgerald’s  character, Nick Carraway was right at the end of The Great Gatsby, when he wrote, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Henri Matisse will be at MOMA through the summer.

He is a must see.

His story, his art, so embodies the spirit of hope and faith in ourselves that sustains us.

In Congress, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Editor’s Note: A WPCNR reader clarified to us that “The Declaration of Independence was approved on July 4 (to explain why independence had been declared two days earlier) but it wasn’t signed until starting in August 1776.”

According to historians “widely accepted,  the Fourth of July 1776— was the day the document was formally dated, finalized, and adopted by the Continental Congress, which had officially voted for independence on July 2 (the day John Adams thought we should celebrate).

John Hancock and Charles Thomson signed early printed copies of the Declaration to be given to military officers and various political committees, but the bulk of the other 54 men signed an official engrossed (finalized and in larger print) copy on August 2, with others following at a later date. Hancock (boldly) signed his name again on the updated version.