La Danse, by Henri Matisse

My old friend, Jon Carroll, of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote the following column a while back. I was just going to quote it, but it is such a good read (and so hard to find) I think I'll just steal the whole thing.

Chronicle Books published a collection of Jon's columns a few years back, Near-Life Experiences. I will tell you this: his column "How To Drive In Indonesia" is worth the price of the book alone. I have read it so many times over the years, laughing out loud starting about the third paragraph and on through the rest of the piece.

In the eighties, I used to see Jon at the M&M Tavern, at the bar, stack of magazines and papers, a drink, a pack of cigarettes and an ashtray arrayed around him, deep in concentration, reading, working. He hates me to say things like this, but he was a true hero of mine in my youth, along with David Bowie, Keith Richards, Iggy Pop, columnist Herb Caen, and, of course, Kojak.

Herewith Jon's Matisse column: 

If you're going to read only one thousand-page book about a French artist this year, make it "The Unknown Matisse," by Hilary Spurling, in two volumes, winner of many awards, filled with big fun, poverty, struggle, scandal and lots of paintings. Cast of hundreds, many of them famous. Can't miss.

I do want to direct your attention to the color plates in the first volume, particularly plate No. 6. The caption reads: "The Dinner Table,' 1896-97. (100 x 131 cm.) The first in a long line of Matisse's works to outrage the public at the annual Paris salons; the other three remained too disturbing to show to anyone except friends in private."

Oh my; it's those naughty French artists again, free and zany in Montmartre, painting things to shock the bourgeoise. And what could it be? It is a woman arranging flowers at a dinner table. The woman is fully clothed. The food on the table is mostly fruit, including pears and lemons. The painting is, if not precisely representational, entirely uncryptic -- a plate looks like a plate, a chair looks like a chair, a wine decanter looks like a wine decanter. There are no disemboweled rabbits, watches floating in space, great smeary bits of color, glued-on bits of hair and fingernails -- nothing like that.