ALCHEMY

The other day I was framing, for a customer, a poster of a Matisse show that recently took place in some modern gallery. The poster was a bright orange 15"x 22" rectangle which housed two square Matisse paintings side-by-side in the top quarter of the poster. Underneath the paintings was the word MATISSE in big 4" high white capital letters and, below that, some other sparse info about the art venue. The poster was simple yet stunning graphic design and was certainly worthy of being framed. The poster was art designed to advertise art. I wondered if Matisse would have imagined his art ever being used in this way. Sure, in his lifetime, there were notes and advertisements that bore reproductions of his artworks, but to then have one of these artifacts revered as art itself is a strange thing. To me, this was a form of alchemy in the arts. We were no longer appreciating the art purely for what it was, and instead it had become the detail of another object. That object, the poster, considered the two Matisse paintings as only a small part of the whole. As an advertisement, the poster was implying that Matisse was the focus and would even plant that seed in the viewer's mind's eye; However, As a piece of graphic design and typography which was to be framed and hung in one's home, it was about that orange rectangle bearing images and words. This, of course, was not turning lead into gold, but the properties of an art had certainly been changed into another art...