Guest Lecturer: Michael Norris, Ph.D.

Topic: "The Younger Matisse"

Mr. Norris of Armchair Art Tours and former curator from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the Cloisters returns with another wonderful lecture sure to inspire.  

A Younger Matisse at the Met, 1869-1906
Henri Emile Benoît Matisse (1869-1954)—an artist famed for his original use of line and color—compared his artistic development to the growth of a seed. We will trace that growth in Matisse’s life story until his mid-thirties, especially through art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He came by the seed metaphor naturally—he was the son of a seed merchant in a northern French town. Despite his conservative appearance and work habits, Matisse continually absorbed new ideas as he worked in Paris and the South of France. We will leave Matisse as he becomes a leader of the “Fauves” or “Wild Beasts” (whose paintings expressed emotion in wild, often dissonant colors), wishing him well for the remaining 48 years of his career.