Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs / Realising what it is to be bold
I visited the Matisse at Tate Modern for a second time last night, which I'm glad about. Last week I ran in before closing one weeknight because I was prejudiciously convinced that it wasn't an exhibition for me, but I'd felt since opening that it was something of an obligation at least to nod to it, given the name (Matisse!) and the creeping realisation that some things in life are singular and may in fact be seen or missed, not recouped. Why glad? Glad because it made me happy, and I was happy appreciating it alone with the audio guide and the relatively few anonymous participants - some alone, some in groupings - towards the later part of a late-summer evening when the humidity has passed in London but the weather hasn't approached anything like cold. There undoubtedly is a magic to the contrast of colour against a white ground, and this enlivened me, too, along with the irreality of the colour combinations, the shapes, the adjacencies of motifs, the scale and r...