Art: Matisse The Color of Genius

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Such is our fin-de-siecle. On every side, the idea of quality is ritually attacked, so that many young artists have come to doubt the most basic experience involved in comparing one artwork with another -- namely, that there are differences of intensity, articulateness, radiance, between works of art; that some speak more convincingly than others; and that this is not a political matter. Fifteen minutes in any room of this sublime exhibition is enough to blow such stale and peevish trivia away. Matisse did much, at the beginning of this century, to dispel the mustiness of academic art. At its end, he may still do the same to the mingy products of end-game academic modernism.