Altoon Sultan blogs about Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs at MoMA, New York, on view through February 8, 2015.

Sultan writes that the show is "an apotheosis of Matisse's work with color and line. Each shape is bounded by fluid lines, each shape carries strong color, and they play with each other across a surface, abutting, overlapping, full of energy. You can understand why this show was such a crowd pleaser with its bright colors and cheerful shapes, but the work is more complex and full of interesting tensions than mere decoration. The monumental Memory of Oceania, in the collection of MoMA, has long been a favorite of mine; to see it in the company of a hundred other works which lead up to, and accompany, its accomplishment is a joy."