Initially hard to know how to respond because the images were mostly so familiar.
I decided to jot down words in response as I walked round:
saturated colour asymmetry morphable patchwork backgrounds surprises celebratory rough cut edges free playful rapidity joyful movement decorative big rhythmic sculptural abundant not neat curvy simple
His cut-outs the complete opposite of mine which are measured, geometric, mostly straight-edged, non-representational, cut on the flat with a knife, involving control and tension in my body. I envy his freedom of working, but then I have been trying to achieve something very different; I have been cutting shapes out of the middle of whole sheets, creating negative spaces - until this week when I have experimented with placing shapes between transparent sheets. How would it be to do some of these 'in the round'? What shapes would I choose - ones that don't need to be cut carefully?
Cutting was a dynamic process, Matisse holding the sheet out in front of himself and moving into it. He said, comparing this process with painting: 'The conditions of the journey are 100% different. The contour of the figure springs from the discovery of the scissors that give it the movement of circulating life. This tool doesn't modulate, it doesn't brush on, but it incises in, underline this well, because the criteria of observation will be different.' This last point is interesting, hinting at the three-dimensionality of the work. His assistant, Lydia Delectorskya, spoke of 'modelling it [a Blue Nude] like a clay sculpture: sometimes adding, sometimes removing.'
Assembly also dynamic, the shapes being adjusted in their relative positions many times over.
Rare layering of shapes:
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| Mimosa |
Alastair Sooke, Henri Matisse: A Second Life
A few points about the cut-outs this highlighted for me:
They were made against a backdrop of pain - the war (begun in 1941), the extreme torture of his daughter by the Nazis, the physical pain of his illness.
He used the medium to drive what he thought of as a second life as an artist.
100s of them, most made as models for something else (book covers, scarves. . . )
He carved the paper with scissors, only closing the blades for angles; did not draw the shapes on to the paper, only as preparatory sketches.
Decorative relationship in Jazz between his handwriting and the images - large-scale; lively looping and flourishes.
M felt that what he had created before 1941 required too much effort; now he was working freely.
Saw The Lyre as his first proper, well thought-out cut-out
Oceania arose out of deeply held memories of his time in Polynesia in 1930, released during sleepless nights. He had produced very little work during the trip itself.
Chapel at Vence: designed not just walls and windows but every decorative element from the wooden confessional door to the priest's robes. Saw its origin in Jazz, with maquettes being made out of cut paper. Kept colours simple, no red, so they could act with greatest force on the viewer. Huge technical difficulties - finding the right colours, most of the tiles breaking at one firing - but none of this is betrayed. Very pleased with the result: 'When I go into the chapel, I feel that my whole being is there...'
'I believe that my role is to provide calm. Because I myself have need of peace.'
Though admired in US, in France they tended to be treated as trivial, the waning work of an old man. M considered these works the equal of his paintings.
Close study shows lots of tiny paper additions, as if something is being moulded.
Drawing on top of gouache in Blue Nudes.
Some edges torn.
Visible pinholes.
As his own life grew more restricted, so the cut-outs evoked worlds and beings that made him happy - an imagined freedom.
Conscioulsy drew on oriental art in his use of negative space.
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