Inspiration Destination: New Orleans—Me and Matisse

Having never been to The Big Easy, I didn’t know what to expect from New Orleans, Louisiana. I had visions of lots of music, lots of people, great food, and some manifestation of the high crime rate in the city. I have to admit, I was a little worried about that last one.

I remember feeling the same way about other cities that I now love: New York, San Diego, Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco, and Miami to name a few. I can now add New Orleans to that list.

Of course, whenever you travel, you have to have enough information and behave in a way so as not to put yourself in bad situations. Wherever you are, trouble may find you; you don’t need to help it along by being unaware. So, with that safety warning behind us, let’s talk ART.

I was walking along Royal Street in the French Quarter and came upon the Martin Lawrence Gallery. A small banner near the door listed featured artists; it was Picasso that drew me in.

I usually have mixed feelings about Picasso, his Flowers In A Vase sculpture being my favorite piece. It’s part of the Raymond and Patsy Nasher collection of modern three-dimensional work. I remember standing next to it at the Milwaukee Art Museum several years ago, surprised by the size of the sculpture. It’s much larger than what I’d expected, and it has positively stuck with me for many years now.

It was the banner and my love / hate relationship with Picasso that walked me through the door. I did so with the recollection of a chapter I’d recently read in “The Woman Who Says No: Françoise Gilot On Her Life With And Without Picasso” where Malte Herwig writes about Gilot’s experience with Picasso and a planned visit to see Henri Matisse. She speaks of Picasso’s controlling disposition, of not making her wishes to see Matisse known to Picasso for fear of it being cancelled and of the interactions of the two men during the visit. (Put this book on your reading list if you have not yet read it.)

Long story short, Picasso hadn’t considered Gilot a viable model for his work until Matisse did during their visit. After that, Picasso seemed to see her differently and, as the story goes, became more and more fixated on her as an object of art than as an artist in her own right. (Yes, really!!)

I took in all of the art on the walls within the gallery and by happy accident ran across 5 pencils by Henri Matisse from 1934, still in remarkable condition and for sale. I looked at them all, compared and chose my favorite. Then I walked on into the gallery. I made it all the way to the back before I did a 180 and sheepishly asked the sales rep if I could take have my picture taken with them. He looked at me like I was crazy and then said “Yes, but I’m not looking.”

Once I had my photo, he asked me which one I was going to buy. I responded, “The one on the top right is my favorite.” And the rest went like this:

“You can take it home for $23,000”
“That’s really not bad for this piece.”
“And, it’s in amazing condition after all this time.” (It really was.)

I thanked him, told him he did a nice thing for me and made me very happy.

I left the gallery smiling and continued on.

Happening upon the Matisse work was certainly a highlight from our trip to New Orleans, and it tied together so many moments in time for me—last summer’s trip to San Diego where I stayed in the home of an art dealer from New York/Paris, where I discovered Françoise Gilot’s work on the wall (among others),

where I felt inspired and delved deeper into the samples on his site, and where I quickly came to appreciate her and her prolific body of work. Thank you to Matisse, Picasso and Gilot for their artistic passion and the way their paths intersected to later part in such a memorable way. Thank you to Colas Engel for taking the time to give my daughter a few pointers passed down to him from his mother, who was also an artist. It is amazing to me how random points across so many planes converged together in one point in time, in a gallery on Royal Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

Watch for more to come from The Big Easy.

For more Françoise Gilot – see also https://www.colasengel.com/francoise-gilot-usa

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Kim Schlepp