In Praise of Henri Matisse
SA Episode #11
Ladies and gentlemen,
Welcome to Episode #11 of The Sovereign Artist series.
I use platform to market my new book in public but also write the next one in public—after all, the goal is simply to keep writing, to derive more pleasure from working on my craft than anything else that has to do with my craft: promotion, events, sales, and so on. I call these peripheral pleasures—they’re great as long as they don’t interfere with the fundamental pleasure: working on my craft. In this case, my next book. My intrinsic motivation must be protected at all costs. Attending 30 different podcasts to promote my book keeps me away from working on my next.
This is not to say that I’m against marketing your artistic projects per se—I fully support this; especially if you do it elegantly—but rather against (over)marketing your art if this kills your desire to produce more art. Promote it. Sell it. Get famous. Celebrate your success. Attend conferences if you have the chance. But don’t allow these peripheral pleasures to destroy the fundamental pleasure: working on your craft. This is why I have yet to attend any events, podcasts, or radio shows; although I’ve already casually accepted some invitations.
I wanted to give my new book a chance to rise and shine without any sort of boosted aid: all sales so far are fully organic. I haven’t invested anything yet to promote it—not even $1. And I’m delighted to share that my book somehow became #1 Best Seller in two categories on Amazon: Existentialism & Business of Art—needless to say, this is something I’ve only dreamt of. I’m not sure how this was even possible; I celebrated by drinking (sipping) one bottle of white wine (Fetească Regală) from Catleya with my fiancée.
3 Aphorisms by Lucian Blaga
You’re superficial precisely because you take things way too seriously.
Sometimes, the more you think about a problem, the harder it gets to solve it.
There are truths that we can only vaguely understand; and we should be content with that. In vain do we try to understand them deeply; we risk not understanding them at all.
3 Aphorisms by Nicolás Dávila
For the traditional man, religion is the only remedy for anguish. The modern man can be cured by reason, progress, drugs, and work.
In this age when every famous site is desecrated by hordes of tourists, the only way for a reverent pilgrim to honor a sacred shrine is to simply not go there.
Any great idea doesn’t expand symmetrically like a formula, but wildly like a shrub.
How to Hire the Best Lawyer
IMAGINE YOU HAVE a critical lawsuit coming up. After you’ve done some research, you need to choose between two lawyers. They’re the best in town; and they both charge the same. The first one is highly refined in appearance. He wears a nice suit, has blue eyes, curly hair, and a charming smile. The second one is bald, speaks with a strong Balkan accent, and looks like a truck driver. What’s your choice? Now, if I had to pick, I would take the “truck driver” any minute. Why? Simply the one who doesn’t look like a lawyer (doesn’t look the part) had much more to overcome in terms of perception to reach success. If you’re lucky to find someone who’s successful despite not looking the part—the chances are—you’re getting the best deal. Even though it doesn’t feel like the best deal. This mental model is called Charisma Razor.
H/T Nassim Taleb & George MacGill
Henri Matisse & His Creative Process
HENRI MATISSE is one of my favorite painters. Yet I feel especially attracted to his latest works of art. See some examples above this paragraph. What I love about his approach is how cheerful his style was despite going through two world wars and fighting cancer.
To be clear: artists who boast happy paintings aren’t necessarily in denial about how much suffering and misery there is in the world. Matisse knew very well what tragedy meant. Yet the real problem, as he shows us, is that darkness is very likely to overpower us and the only remedy is to make a deliberate effort to be happy.
Mircea Eliade shares the same philosophy; he lived almost during the same period as Matisse. In an interview, Eliade firmly rejects misery in art “because we can almost see it everywhere around us today. Why add more ugliness to the universal ugliness into which we’re being plunged deeper and deeper every day?”
Matisse wasn’t an aristocrat but the son of a middle-class family. He studied law and initially worked as a legal clerk. In 1892, having given up his law career, he went to Paris to study art formally. His first teachers were academically trained and relatively conservative. If you take a look at his early paintings—click here to view them all—you may easily decipher how banal they were; he simply made many copies after the old masters. Discovering manifold artistic movements that coexisted or succeeded one another on the dynamic Parisian artistic scene, such as Neoclassicism, Realism, Impressionism, and Neo-Impressionism, he experimented with a diversity of styles, employing new kinds of brushwork, light, and composition. Yet, at this point in time, there was nothing original about his style. He was, largely speaking, a copycat. A very talented copycat; but still a copycat.
Matisse’s true artistic liberation—in terms of the use of color to render forms and organize spatial planes—came about first through the influence of the French painters Gauguin, Signac, or Cezanne, and the Dutch artist Van Gogh, whose work he studied closely beginning about 1900.
Around 1910, this is when Matisse’s original style really started to emerge. After such a long period of abiding by plenty of different styles and copying so many artists, internalizing all of this knowledge and experience to produce something unique feels predictable in hindsight.
He humbly confessed, “I have been no more than a medium.” I call this creative journey fractal stealing—the process of copying and getting inspired by so many different sources to the extent that, at some point, you organically (perhaps effortlessly) design a new style. Once you understand this, you can never forget it.
Wrapping up...
Hope you liked this episode!
Any feedback, suggestion, or criticism is welcome.
Thank you for your time,
Vizi Andrei
Creator of KronArête