Souvenir de N. Dame and Henri Matisse

"Was it a painting of Notre Dame?

Not exactly. But neither was it abstract.

A painting, Matisse saw, was something, like memory itself, that was hard-won, boiled down, licked by fire. It needed to be built and rebuilt, and it was always changing in the minds of those who saw and loved it." -Sebastian Smee for the Washington Post

Thank you to Tyler Green who gave me the idea for today's post (and whose podcast, Modern Art Notes, you should be listening to.)