The value depends on the traveler’s maturity:
The mind of a man who is still developing can be intoxicated by places like Tahiti because his pleasures are confused (that is to say that when he has felt the voluptuous roundness of a Tahitian woman, he imagines that the sky is clearer). But when a man is formed, organized, with an ordered brain, he no longer makes these confusions and better knows the source of his euphoria, of his dilatation. Consequently, he doesn’t risk interrupting the course of his own development. It is thus for the painter. A voyage made at the time when the mind is already formed has a usefulness different from that of a voyage made by a young man.
(Quoted from page 227 of Chatting with Henri Matisse: The Lost 1941 Interview. The Getty Research Institute, 2013.)
For a brief biography of Henri Matisse, click here. For images of or relating to Henri Matisse, click here.
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