Henri Matisse - La Coiffeur

Art Appreciation

Henri Matisse: La Coiffeur, 1901

When I was doing an internship in Washington, D.C., I spent my Fridays visiting the various museums. One of my favorites, which I visited several times, was the National Gallery of Art.  There I fell in love with art.

I began to appreciate every artist's brush stroke. I looked for patterns. I pictured myself in their painting and tried to feel what they wanted to portray in their work.

I came across La Coiffeur by Henri Matisse. I couldn't take my eyes off of it. I pictured myself, a 21 year old kid from South Texas, in that room watching a beautiful woman fixing her hair in front of a vanity.

I soon became a fan of Henri Matisse and to this day look for his work when visiting other museums.

Born in Nord, France on December 31, 1869, Henri Matisse was a post-impressionist artist known for the dissonant colors in many of his paintings.

His wife, Amelie Noellie Parayre, appeared in a lot of his paintings. Given that they married in 1898, I would make a safe guess that the lady in the painting, La Coiffeur, is Amelie Noellie.


Source: http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/matisse_henri.html; http://www.arthistory-famousartists-paintings.com/HenriMatisse.html; Wikipedia

Tenochtitlan

According to legend, Tenochtitlan was founded when an Aztec tribe saw the prophetic image of an eagle perched on a nopal cactus eating a snake. 

Located on an island in Lake Texcoco, Tenochtitlan became the capital of the Aztec empire. In the mid-1500s, Tenochtitlan was destroyed and leveled by Spanish conquestadors. 

Lake Texcoco was eventually filled. The Aztec temple dedicated to the principal deity Huitzilopochtli was destroyed. The stones were then used to build the Cathedral of the Assumption of Mary. 

Because of its massive size and due to the clay foundation and water table below, the cathedral is slowly sinking. Recently, while constructing an underground subway, city workers came across remains of Tenochtitlan. You can read another Aztec legend HERE.

Source: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenochtitlan

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