This is a paragraph about Henri Matisse that I read in the book 'Surrealism' by Mary Ann Caws (who is an expert on surrealism and is just pretty awesome in my opinion). I came across it when researching my latest project and it moved me so much that I actually got out my notebook and wrote it down so I wouldn't forget about it. When reading it I just felt the passion with which Michael Leiris talks about Matisse's work, the words are just beautiful, it's like a flowing poem of raw wonderfulness! Would love if someone wrote even half as passionately and fiercely about me and my work as Leiris does here.
Hope you feel it as much as I did:
"But how can he not be given credit when we see these figures - so concrete, so self evident, as absolute as the creatures we love - produced by his fingers and moulded in the fleeting and unbitter salt of the snow, the dust that comes from the fingernails as they are being polished - the impalpable ashes a lover would keep like a relic - the marvellous salt so many ancient seekers thought they could gather from the Earths' womb, the saltiness of waves and stars since they too have their tides, and then the salt of tears, tears of laughter, despair of madness, gentle and vaguely malicious tears, grotesque tears, or heavy tears full of the salt of bones and frozen carcasses, always drops of water, falling tirelessly, sometimes drilling a dazzling well into the silent rock of existence, concrete drops of water like the salt which will always inflame our hunger,
sea salt, bitter salt, the salt of cracking phalanx bones,
the salt of teeth, the salt of sweat, the salt of looks..."
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| Woman before an Aquarium, 1921 Henri Matisse |
