Henri Matisse - Master of Impressionist Art

“What I dream of is an art of balance, purity, and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter... a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.” - Henri Matisse Henri Matisse was born in Le Cateau-Cambresis, Nord, France. He grew up in Bohain-en-Vermandois, Picardy, France, where his parents owned a flower business; he was their first son. In 1887, he went to Paris to study law, working as a court administrator in Le Cateau-Cambrésis after gaining his qualification. He first began painting in 1889, after his mother brought him art supplies during a period of convalescence following an attack of appendicitis. He discovered "a kind of paradise" as he later described it, and decided to become an artist. In 1891, he returned to Paris to study art at the Académie Julian and became a student of William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Gustave Moreau. Initially, he painted still-lives and landscapes in a traditional style proficiently. Matisse was influenced by the works of earlier masters such as Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Nicolas Poussin and Antoine Watteau and Edouard Manet. Chardin was one of Matisse's most admired painters; as an art student, he made copies of four Chardin paintings in the Louvre. He emerged as a Post-Impressionist and achieved prominence as the leader of the French movement Fauvism. He preferred to use color as the foundation for expressive and decorative paintings. He became famous for his original use of colour. He had skills as a draughtsman and a printmaker. He went on also to become a sculptor but was known essentially as a painter. He defined revolutionary developments in the visual arts during the first couple of decades of the twentieth century along with Pablo Picasso. His work between 1900 and 1905 brought him recognition as the `wild one’ or one of the `Fauves’. He developed a style that was rigorous; one which emphasized decorative patterns and flattened forms. He started living in Nice on the French Riviera from 1917 and adopted a more relaxed style of work up to the nineteen twenties. He upheld the classical tradition in French painting style. After 1930, he continued with a simplification of form. Ill health in later years prevented him from painting and he started to do work in the medium of cut paper collage. Matisse has left his stamp through his expressive use of drawing and colour and is an important figure in the history of modern art. He is recognised for his original and fluid draughtsman ship. He was also a fine sculptor and printmaker although he is considered mainly as a painter. Along with Marcel Duchamp and Pablo Picasso, he has helped shape the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts during the initial decades of the twentieth century. Several of his paintings during the last decade of the nineteenth century use a `divisionist’ technique which he adopted after reading Eugene Delacroix and Neo-Impressionism, a work by Paul Signac. His work as a sculptor started with a copy after Antoine-Louis Barye in 1899. He devoted his energy later to working with clay when he completed `The Slave’ in 1903. His solo exhibition was in 1904 at the Ambroise Vollard Gallery. He did not achieve much success. In 1904, he spent a summer painting in St. Tropez with Neo-Impressionists Henri Edmond Cross and Paul Signac. His important works from this period are `Luxe’ and `Calme et Volupte’. He also worked with Andre Derain at Collioure. He laid an emphasis on controlled lines and flat shapes. In 1905, there was an exhibition held by Matisse and a group of artists known as `Fauves’ at the Salon d'Automne. The paintings expressed emotion with wild and dissonant colours, often without regard for the natural colours of the subject. Matisse showed `Open Window’ and `Woman with the Hat’. Critic Louis Vauxcelles described the work with the phrase `Donatello au milieu des fauves!’ (Donatello among the wild beasts); he was referring to a Renaissance-type sculpture that existed in the same room. His comment was printed on 17th October 1905 in `Gil Blas’, a daily. The exhibition drew harsh criticism from some - "A pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public", said the critic Camille Mauclair but it also attracted some favorable attention. When the painting that was singled out for special condemnation, Matisse's `Woman with a Hat’, was bought by Gertrude and Leo Stein, the nervous artist’s morale improved considerably. Matisse once wrote, “if my story were to be written truthfully from beginning to end, it would amaze everyone.” He developed a long association with Sergei Shchukin, a Russian art collector. His major work, `La Danse’ (1909), was done especially for Shchukin. It was part of a double painting commission. The other work was `Music’ (1910). These works could be seen now in the collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Henri Matisse died of a cardiac arrest in 1954, at the age of eighty-four. He is buried in the cemetery of Monastere Notre Dame de Cimiez. It is near Nice. The impact of Matisse on Fauvism is no less than that of William Shakespeare on English literature and Sigmund Freud on psychology. American abstract artists such as Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock were influenced by him in making the colour responsible for structural configurations. Their works showcased this kind of style. Matisse has had a great impact on artists of late twentieth century who defined a pictorial language clearly with colours and arabesque lines instead of making a painting look like a means to an end.

Caves and the Subterranean World

Mountains symbolise the zenith of human aspiration while caves are linked with depths of the power of darkness and depravity. It is a stupid association as for thousands of years; caves have provided basic shelter for both man and animals. Caves are also attractive and colourful. Most of the caves have been formed in limestone rock or dolomite. These rocks are sedimentary because they are laid down in layers which are successive. They become susceptible to vertical cracking. Water that seeps down these vertical faults works its way along the bedding planes and it wears away the rock. It results in the formation of sink holes and horizontal caverns. Changes in these water tables have left some caves very dry but many have rivers running through them and they help feed large underground lakes and subterranean waterfalls. Diving apparatus is required at many places to explore these caves. Most caves are damp as water seeps through cracks and joints in their roofs or trickles down their walls. This water is coming through the limestone layers and it starts to dissolve some of the lime. When the water evaporates, it leaves traces behind of calcium carbonate that builds up over a period of time. Some of the calcium carbonate gets deposited at points in the ceilings where the water drips while the remainder falls to floors of the caves. As a result of this, hanging deposits or stalactites and standing deposits or stalagmites are formed. If these formations are allowed to grow for longer periods of time, they will unite and columns will be formed, usually clustered together in styles of music organ pipes. Some caves will form as a result of volcanic activity. This is because the hot lava flows from a fissure and will cool rapidly when exposed to the air and it will harden on the surface while the molten lava flowing underneath drains away, leaving a cavity. There are caves of this type in Hawaii and Iceland. Few caves are a result of water erosion, mostly from the sea and they can take on several varieties of shapes. Their rocks are not always of the same hardness. Waves that hit the cliff will soon cut into rocks which are softer than their surroundings and are likely to erode horizontal or vertical joints. Waves that crash into deep caverns will compress the air within them and this makes the rock loose at weak points in the roofs. A natural chimney or blow hole is formed at some distance back from the face of the cliff. When the arch collapses, a vertical stack will be left and an example of this is the Old Man of Hoy cliff in the Orkney Scottish Islands. The temperature in caves remains mostly constant at about fifty degrees Fahrenheit and this is a boon to many animals, particularly bats. Such kinds of caves are found on the French Riviera, Spain, the Middle East and the Philippines. A remarkable bat cave is the one in Texas USA – the Ney Cave and it is presumed to give shelter to almost fifteen million bats. Other interesting specimens are the columns that guard the entrance to Fingal’s Cave (also made popular by Felix Bartholdy Mendelssohn’s haunting and mystical overture). This cave is located on the island of Staffa, Inner Hebrides, Scotland in the United Kingdom. The columns may look like Masonic work to you but they are a natural formation of basalt which split in this fashion thousands of years ago. Typical limestone formations in caves could be seen in the Tillywhim Caves in Dorset near Swansee. In this case, water has penetrated through the fissures in the rock. The channels have enlarged gradually and they have created underground rivers. The rivers dried up eventually and became dry and their mouths got exposed by the fall and the erosion of the rocks along the coast of the sea.

Intellect and its Limitations

“Pride goeth on horseback and cometh back on foot” – Anonymous What is the capacity of intelligence? Intelligence has been defined in more than one way; it is the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, reasoning, creativity and problem-solving. Yet our intelligence has several limitations and that includes the inability to process large amounts of information simultaneously as we have limited memory and self-control and have the vulnerability to make mistakes when processing complicated tasks. Each restriction suppresses the amount of data processed in a given situation and time. Social regulations often act as hindrances in being honest in life. We have to go along with the world, a world which is honoured for its reason and intellect. Anything that is connected with feeling is deemed as persona non-grata. It is not welcome. We are caught up in a network of social rituals and make-believes that hit upon us hard and bind us down like prisoners in a cage of ignorance and sub-conscious habits, whether they have any relevance to fact or not. Intellect, like any machine, has its limitations. If understanding a concept was like a recipe, we would require several ingredients such as memory, information and practice; they are all interlinked. The bad news is that our brain makes us all very limited in our access to these. To get information, we have to focus our concentration on what we want to learn. We are not very successful at multi-tasking. With limited attention comes limited input. There is a lot out there that we could study as there is no dearth of information but our capacity to grasp new information is definitely capped. Many spiritualists would come forward and say that intellectual exercise of a religious practice is honoured and appreciated among seekers such as kundalini yoga and hatha yoga. These practices are all good enough in their own way and nothing is wrong with them but they are not sufficient to attain superiority of the intellect. There are secrets within men which even angels cannot know easily. God only knows what is inside us; even we cannot know wholly what is within us. So, it is a part of our wisdom to be a little cautious in assessing the various components of our nature and the building bricks of our personality. It is not easy to see what stuff we are really made of. The occupations in our lives prevent us from being leisurely in our thoughts and we are often drifting because of our vocations. The office work, the business and shopping keep us busy, so that there is not enough leisure to ponder deeply into the substance of what we are made of. We seem to be made out of our social relations in the sense of the atmosphere in which we are living, at every given moment of time. When we are in USA, we think like the Americans; when we are in England, we think like the British; when we are in the midst of orthodoxy, our thinking is orthodox, so that we do not know what exactly the true environment of ours is. Yet, there is an environment of our own which we seldom encounter by reason of the storm of social air that blows over us. Even if we have a small social circle like a four-member family, we cannot be entirely true to ourselves. We are controlled by our fathers, our mothers, our brothers, our sisters and many other relations of this type. We simply cannot be ourselves even when living in a small family, because we are afraid of what others think; and it is much worse if we are in a larger community where every eye is looking at us. Memory depends on the formation of fresh neural connections and we have a restricted number of these connections. When we grow old, it becomes harder for our brains to create new connections and existing connections get overloaded with various memories. It becomes harder to learn and also harder to remember, as we tend to start confusing facts and events. In a comfortable society and a safe atmosphere, submerged feelings are not likely to get manifested. If we promise our creditor that he would be paid after two months, he goes with satisfaction because the promise is given; but if he knows that we are not going to pay, that will become a different matter. He will shout and stand at our door. This defensive attitude of our feelings will be known to us either when we are opposed by our atmosphere in every way or when we are totally alone, left to ourselves on a mountain top with no chance of satisfaction of any kind for a defined period. We will be dreaming of the pleasures of the world. If we go far away from human settlements, the desires become more serious and restless because they know they cannot get anything they want; but, if we live in a city, there is a promise that our desires may get fulfilled and our emotions stay in control. The feeling of security that we feel is very important. An insecure person is always dwelling in a state of turmoil and hot water. So, the human intellect or capacity to understand is the capability of a mind to generalise experiences, to work with abstract conditions and to make conclusions from assumptions. The deterioration of the human intellect could be attributed to depression, stress or disease and to vandalism, terrorism or militancy in societies that tend to threaten humanity with extinction. For effectively using information to form a deep understanding, you need to practice. Besides extremely important events, an effective way to form long-term memories is only through practice. It has to be remembered that we don’t have unlimited time to practice everything that we want to learn and there is a practical limit to our understanding of things that are happening in the world. We are always used to seeing beauty and pleasure in this world, but we cannot see it in God. Intellect will expand if we understand this concept. Ironically, the moment we speak the name of God, there is a sense of fear within us. We are frightened because of the judgment and punishment of the soul out of earthly misdeeds and intentions. People do not project love for God as they do for their parents, their husbands or wives and children. What people are failing to understand is that God is not just a police commissioner or an army general, but a source of beauty and glory. Those who have an understanding of the beauty and power of the spirit and its relationship with the Creator realise that beauty is a subtle secret that creeps silently into us in a private manner and does not operate publicly like the mathematical calculations of a scientist.

Fossil Fuel Financing and how well it is backed up by the rich and the greedy

Most of the corporate companies in this world have shown time and again that they only mouth their concerns for the planet’s environment but their sight is on profits and profits alone; at any expense or cost. A few months ago, J.P. Morgan Chase faced a shareholder resolution that was historic and it was to end their financing for the expansion of fossil fuels. What happened? Their management opposed it vigorously. In the Paris agreement on Climate Control, signs were shown that we have a potential to limit climate change to 1.5°C objective. Drastic changes have to take shape, starting right now. It can start with reduction and eventual end to the expansion of fossil fuels. Once again, the pointer is towards J.P. Morgan Chase as the largest funder of fossil fuels and for being one of the top financers of Exxon. Will they take any steps? Not likely. Anything to come about nature’s preservation takes a backseat to wicked greed for moolah. These are critical times as far as climate control is concerned. Each action of ours or lack of action may have life changing consequences for everyone on earth. Aren’t we already experiencing the damaging effect of climate change everywhere? We see forest fires and heat waves, crop failures and floods, tornadoes and drought. The value of damage is in billions of dollars every year with thousands of people dying, worldwide. While this is happening, bankers and insurance companies are busy aiding climate destruction by pouring billions of dollars in the finance of fossil fuels in the past several years. Isn’t it time to hold such companies accountable for their direct hand in climate destruction? Companies have to start looking on how to clean up their supply chains which are leaving a big trail of damage, ranging from the boreal forests of Canada to the rainforests of Amazon and Indonesia. It is time to tell such companies to cease their land theft, deforestation and abuse of environment. Many big corporates still continue to source such commodities that are a risk to forests such as producers of palm oil and paper from most indifferent suppliers. Some of them have connections to land theft on an indigenous basis, disturbing habitat of orangutans and leading to a chain of violent activities in places like Indonesia. These people are putting the earth’s future at risk by destroying the rainforests that cannot be replaced. They are also destroying the climate and local and indigenous communities of people. It is time to drill some sense into this world and the wicked rich and the corporate to stop their deforestation activities and abuse of human rights.

Insurance Companies backing the destruction of this planet's environment

The insurance industry plays a major role in the creation of climate chaos and the rising disasters that are being experienced by the communities they are supposed to protect. That is why it is ironic when insurance companies recently gathered in San Francisco for a conference and they called it `Risk World’. They have actually been taking a lot of risk with the well-being of this world. Big insurers know that their role in the climate crisis has not gone unnoticed. It is about time that the world has held insurance companies responsible for the damage that they have been causing to the climate situation. Let them be reminded about the ashes of all those homes and cities that were destroyed by wildfires in California and Colorado. Some of these companies blow their trumpets saying that they care about communities and that they are being stewards of this planet. Their actions are actually going the other way. They would rather insure fossil fuels than protect the climatic chaos. They have to start learning how to avoid fossil fuels instead of abandoning communities. They say they are in the business of risk management; then, let them start by insuring this planet’s future. Some companies are in the business of gaining profit from the destruction of climate. It is about time that they take climate action to keep the temperatures from rising to below 1.5ºC and protect community health. Insurers have to stop risking this world in the name of profit and greed. As of now, eighteen insurers have ruled out their backing the Trans Mountain tar sands pipeline. The clock is ticking. We have roughly about a decade to end the fossil fuel expansion drives. So, plans for new oil pipelines like Trans Mountain are a reckless threat to humanity. The very idea of insurance companies covering this dangerous project is so absurd — the companies that are to cover damages in the case of disasters are actually supporting the world’s worst unfolding disaster — in real time. The Trans Mountain pipeline stretches seven hundred miles across Western Canada and the current plan would triple the pipeline’s oil capacity. Tar sands are one of the most destructive fossil fuels on the planet: they release thrice as much greenhouse gas pollution levels as conventional oil. It is critical that construction of the Trans Mountain Pipeline is halted in its tracks. A powerful coalition has to be built of communities that would challenge the business corporate power behind these pipelines. The Canadian government has taken a wise decision to stop using further funds from the public domain for this over budgeted pipeline project. Yet, there are corporate that would muster loan guarantee up to ten billion Canadian dollars. Despite the massive threat to clean drinking water and a healthy climate, construction of this destructive pipeline expansion project is still planned to move forward.

Banks are contributing to the deterioration of this planet’s climate

Big banks do not realise that they are contributing heavily to the crashing of the earth’s climate by financing the worst fossil fuel criminals. Life on earth is in peril. The biggest solution to preserve life on this planet is by curbing or restricting fossil fuels’ usage. Humanity could survive a very big threat this way. Yet, time is running out faster than we would like to think. We need to act fast and act with prudence. It is the big banks that are not helping by financing organisations that do not believe in keeping fossil fuels in the ground and stopping the spread of poison on this planet. The world’s leading bankers have to learn better money habits and avoid the funding of organisations that are hell bent on destroying the earth’s climate. Since the past seven years, bankers such as Bank of America have funded over two hundred billion dollars in financing of fossil fuels. Who is the main beneficiary? Exxon Mobil who cares two hoots about the survival of our climate and our ozone layers. Companies like these are doing their most in hurting our climate and our communities. Another example is the financing of Formosa Plastics’ twelve-billion dollar petrochemical complex which is sure to double the toxic emissions in one of the highest regions of cancer rates in the United States of America. Bank executives could re-strategise and decide on ditching fossil fuels and climate-destroying agents like Formosa Plastics and Exxon Mobil. Bank of America tries to educate its target audience by promoting its `better money habits’ on social media channels while, in reality, it is helping finance destructive industries. We have to be committed to the future of our climate and our ozone layers by ending expansion of fossil fuel usage and withdrawing support for the petrochemical complexes.

What would the earth do without the Mountains?

One of the greatest and most extraordinary features of our planet Earth is the mountain. It has always retained its majesty, regardless of the number of times man has climbed it. God spoke to man on a mountain. The highest range above land is in the Himalayas in the form of Mount Everest and the deepest under an ocean is found in the Pacific Mariana Trench. `Himalaya’ in Sanskrit means `the house of snow’. The Indian sub-continent collided with the mainland of Eurasia and forced the Himalayas up at the point of impact. This was a major continental drift. The sea-beds and the land masses of this world are on huge tectonic plates which are in constant motion over the surface of this oval globe. The Atlantic Ocean is also growing wider at the rate of about a cople of centimetres or three-quarters of an inch, every year. Mountains are formed by the crust of the Earth breaking up into large blocks. Some blocks get to move up while others sink downwards. The Jura Mountains between France and Switzerland were formed by a process of folding just like the crust of the Earth being compressed laterally as a pile of blankets will do when pushed from either side. Rain and wind, cold and heat have weathered these huge rocks and broken them up to smoothen up their contours so that their jagged rock would be rounded off as hills. The craggier and sharper shapes of mountains suggest that they are newer ones. Volcanic action is a process by which matter from within the Earth is forced up to the surface, by heat. Most geologists have classified a mountain as a landform that rises at least a thousand feet or more above its surrounding areas. A mountain range is a series or chain of mountains that are close together. Mountains are quite useful for the well-being of humans as they are a storehouse of water. Many rivers have their source in the glaciers in the mountains. Reservoirs are made and the water is harnessed for the use of people. Volcanoes have played a significant part in the formation of the seas as they have brought water to the surface from deep within the earth and aided in releasing oxygen. You can see this in all rocks and it makes up nearly half their weight. The formation of a volcano begins when the rock melts within the earth, as far down as hundred miles. The melted rock is called magma. It releases gas when it melts and the mix of this magma and gas slowly rises towards the surface. The magma finds a weaker spot in the surface and it bursts out. The main volcanic ranges in this world are concentrated between New Zealand and Indonesia in the Pacific Ocean to Japan and to Alaska. It is known as the `ring of fire’. Almost sixty-two per cent of the active volcanoes in this world are along the plate margins of the Pacific Ocean. Mountains are the water towers of the world. They provide almost sixty percent of all freshwater resources for our planet. At least, half of the world's population depends on the mountain ecosystem services to survive; not only for water but also for food and clean energy. Why do mountains matter in the scheme of things on earth? Major cities such as Rio de Janeiro, New York, Nairobi and Tokyo rely almost exclusively on freshwater from mountains. Mountains are beneficial to man in a variety of ways. For example, mountains retain water. Water from the mountains is also used for cultivation and hydroelectric power generation. In the mountains, paragliding, hang gliding, river rafting and skiing are all popular activities. Mountains provide water for agriculture, food, hydroelectricity, shelter and fresh water. As temperatures decrease with altitude, mountains affect the distribution of snow and ice cover through ecosystems. For example, the slow release of water from snow melting from mountains can provide freshwater throughout the year as it flows into streams and recharges aquifers. Mountains attract around twenty percent of global tourism and they host nearly one-quarter of all terrestrial biodiversity. They are home to many of the foods that come to our tables, such as rice, potatoes, tomatoes and barley. Available records indicate that glaciers in mountain ranges around the world are retreating and disappearing due to climate change. At least six-hundred glaciers have disappeared completely over the past decades; affecting water supplies relied on by billions living downstream. For example, in Pakistan, water originating from the Hindu Kush Himalayas provides eighty percent of irrigation for the Indus Basin, where food is grown for one hundred and eighty million people. Climate change is triggering disasters through avalanches, mud and rock slides which tumble downstream, stripping bare forests, flooding communities and populations. Infectious diseases such as malaria will spread at higher altitudes in the tropics as a result of rising temperatures and climate change, affecting millions of people living in the mountains.