The guarantees of art.

There's a sense with Matisse of two tendencies at play in different places in his work - a stylist who creates slick and beautiful lines and shapes effortlessly in a trademark manner, as if there’s no possibility of failure - and an artist who struggles with technique and style: the Matisse who can’t draw hands very well, the one who pins, or paints or draws and re-pins, over-paints, draws over, again and again, often tentatively, who after he finds a solution that’s slick, reworks the theme again in a way that is more risky. There’s the Matisse who’s an institution, a guarantee of quality provided in advance, and the Matisse for whom there is no guarantee authorised by a name or style in a generic way, but for which the promise needs to be won afresh, or not, each time. 

With that in mind here’s some really bad Matisse hands.