Late de Kooning on late Matisse

Matisse, too, was often in his thoughts. He admired the graphic simplicity of La Danse, which he had often seen in the Museum of Modern Art, and he loved the spirit of the cutouts. "Lately I've been thinking," he said in 1980, "that it would be nice to be influenced by Matisse. I mean, he's so lighthearted. I have a book about how he was old and he cut out colored patterns and he made it so joyous. I would like to do that, too- not like him, but joyous, more or less."

 My favorite de Kooning quote, from the book
de Kooning: An American Master, (page 589)

top: Matisse spread fom Life magazine, Aug 1970

de Kooning photo by Linda McCartney, from Linda's Pictures, 1976
de Kooning's Untitled, 1982

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