In “Notes of a Painter,” Matisse wrote, “What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter, an art which could be for every mental worker, for the businessman as well as the man of letters, for example, a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.”

 

A century later, this quote seems quaint. We’ve more or less become accustomed to art that can be uncomfortable and provocative, ugly and penetrating. It can be shiny porcelain sculptures and spray-painted street murals, or misshapen female forms and giant fiberglass eyeballs.

But when I recently walked into a store and came across stationery made by one of my favorite contemporary painters and illustrators, Matte Stephens, I found my good armchair. I’ve been a fan of Stephens’ whimsical cats and muted cityscapes for a few years, and I’ve always been a letter writer, so Stephens’ “Somewhat Stationary Cats” was an obvious purchase. Stephens has done commercial illustration for some big-name clients, but he’s also built a devoted following of his inexpensive prints of owls and foxes, all rendered in a gorgeous palette that is nothing if not a soothing and calming influence on the mind.

I’ve written in this space before about mass producing art, about what happens when you reduce and flatten a Matisse Blue Nudes collage into a four-by-six postcard. But what about art that seems to be produced for the masses, art that doesn’t vie for museum real estate, but makes thousands of people feel like they’ve slipped into their favorite armchair at the end of a long day? I wouldn’t have even known about Stephens if it wasn’t for the almighty Internet—when I saw the orange tabby cat on the stationery, it was familiar to me from hours of perusing Stephens’ Etsy shop. My recent stationery sale was made solely because I’d seen small scanned reproductions of his work on my thirteen-inch monitor. Probably not the audience that Matisse dreamed of.

An artist like Stephens wouldn’t have as much of an audience if it wasn’t for outlets like Etsy or Chronicle Books (the company that published “Somewhat Stationary Cats,” and has turned the work of many other popular artists into stationery and sticky notes). His just isn’t the kind of art you’d find hanging in a museum. It’s sweet and whimsical and illustrative, and you want to hang it in your sitting room or foyer. To some extent, the boundaries between so-called low and high art are slowly disintegrating—Banksy’s humorous graffiti-style work is a case in point, but surely it started ninety-four years ago with Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain. At the same time, we’ve come to expect art in public places. What would Federal Plaza in Chicago be without Flamingo, or Daley Plaza without the unnamed Picasso? It’s not an open plaza, but isn’t a stationery shop a kind of public place, too?

And when Stephens’ paintings are reduced and flattened and re-produced, and then packaged into matching sheets and envelopes and manufactured in China, does it cease to become art? I’ve been writing letters for at least twenty-five years, and it used to be that my stationery options were pale pink sheets with die-cut hearts, stationery with no artistic intent. As much as we accept, and even love, contemporary art that makes us squirm, we still return to the lovely, the comfortable, the soothing and calming influences. We still need our armchairs and a break from our physical fatigue. We need affordable art in our homes, which, for better or worse, often means a trip to the Internet instead of a trip to our favorite art gallery. We need to be surrounded by art, whether it’s a Banksy on a concrete wall or a sculpture in the middle of downtown or the very papers we write on. So is Stephens’ stationery art? I certainly hope so.