Mouli Cohen - Interests

Philanthropy in support of the Arts and education through the arts


	Oakland School for the Arts This program receives my support because it is an important and effective educational program developed by Mayor Jerry Brown to help underprivileged children of the Oakland area succeed in the arts. Visit >
	Asian Art Museum As a donor, I actively support the museum's mission of leading a diverse global audience in discovering the unique material, aesthetic, and intellectual achievements of Asian art and culture. Visit >
	SF MOMA As a Director's Circle member and collector of important 20th century art, one of the privileges of being a San Francisco resident is supporting one of the world's most innovative museums of modern and contemporary art. Visit >


	DeYoung Museum Education Working in conjunction with Didi Wilsey and Harry Parker, my grant enhances a unique educational program that supports art and cultural history in California's public schools with exciting classroom materials that directly link the museum's collections with the public school curriculum. Visit >
	The Legion of Honor An active member in support of San Francisco's most beautiful museum and one of the world's most important collections of ancient and European art. Visit >

I particularly find the art of the 20th century masters a fantastic study in line, color and emotion. Miro, Picasso, Matisse and Calder make up a class that has attracted my attention and investment. Not only do the intellectual aspects of their work hold importance for me, but as you consider the neuro-biology of human sight and perception, and how their art is processed by our visual systems, you'll gain an even greater understanding and appreciation of their work. - Mouli

For reference: Biology and the art of seeing, By Margaret Livingstone.

Quotes from Matisse

Early Matisse
"The quest for color did not come to me from studying other painters, but from the outside, that is from a revelation of light in nature"

"In modern art, it's indisputably to Cezanne that I owe most"

Unleashing color, the fauvist pictures
"The choice of my colours is not based on scientific theory; it is based on observation, feeling, on the expression of my sensibility."

"In painting, colours only have their power and eloquence when they are used in a pure state."

"What I dream of is an art of balance, purity, calm, without disturbing subject...something like a good armchair."

Matisse did not like linear perspective, instead preferring the "perspective of feeling"
"To seek out what the line wants, the point where it wants to come in or die."

On harmony of composition
"Expression does not lie in the passion that fills a face. It is in the entire arrangement of my picture; the place the figures occupy, the spaces around them, the proportions, all play a part."

On his numerous paintings with open windows
"You paint the way you sing, without constraints."

"Of course music and colour have nothing in common, but they follow parallel paths. Seven notes with slight modifications are enough to write any score. Why should the same not be true of painting?"

On coloured paper
"Paper cut-outs are coloured drawings whose only aim is to use fine, ready-made colours, without disturbing their purity."

"Matisse spent over 60 years searching for one thing: the reconciliation of line with colour. He found a solution in 1941 with paper cut-outs. Replacing pencil and brush with scissors was not only an ingenious idea but, above all, for Matisse it was the answer. Like a sculptor carving into the 'quick of the colour', he had succeeded in linking line with colour and shape with surface." - Anette Robinson, Matisse

Thoughts from very late in life
Nothing can ever be taken for granted; you always have to fight against the "easy pencil stroke". - paraphrased by Anette Robinson, Matisse