A few weeks ago, Holland Cotter reviewed the new Matisse show in the Times:

For Matisse, self-appointed purveyor of luxe, calme, and volupté, it seems that trial-and-error rawness, some evidence of struggle, validated the work. You find a lot of such evidence in the zesty pinned-paper maquettes he made in 1943 for his book “Jazz,” for which he had high hopes. But when it was finally published in 1947, he hated it. All the irregularities of texture, the paper-on-paper depths, what Matisse referred to as the “sensitivity” of the designs, were missing. Printing had cleaned and pressed them in high-contrast graphics, polished, perfect and dead.

Texture. It’s the first thing I noticed about today’s apple a day: Hudson’s Golden Gem. It is rough and beautiful like a pear. Close your eyes and take a bite and damn if it doesn’t taste like a pear too.