Perspectives

Exhibition
Henri Matisse: cutting into colour

Tate Succession Henri Matisse/DACS 2013

Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs

Tate Modern, London, UK, until
Sept 7, 2014, and then touring to
the Museum of Modern Art,
New York, USA from Oct 14,
2014, to Feb 9, 2015
http://www.tate.org.uk/whatson/tate-modern/exhibition/
henri-matisse-cut-outs

Henri Matisse had neither the time

nor the inclination for boredom.
Working obsessively and consistently
over six decades, his work progressed
from the emotive realism of
postimpressionisma period when
he interpreted the words of his
mentor Camille Pissarro to paint
what he could observe and feelinto
a new realm of modernism. His work
was guided by instinct, memory, and
passion, and he conveyed emotion
through the arrangement of colour
and form.
More than 100 of the artists later
and final works are now on show at
Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs at the Tate
Modern in London. The exhibition
brings together a collection of visual
masterpieces, ranging from striking
cut out collages and designs for
books and stained glass windows to
tapestries and ceramics. The relation
between the raw material Matisse
used and the finished work is vividly
captured in this story of Matisses
final years.

Henri Matisse, The Snail (1953)

Gouache on paper, cut and pasted on paper mounted to canvas.

1878

Matisses works are testament

to the incredible vitality of the
artist at a time when his body was
increasingly frail after life-saving
surgery for duodenal cancer in 1941.
Every day that dawns is a gift to me
and I take it in that way. I accept it
gratefully without looking beyond
it. I completely forget my physical
suering and all the unpleasantness of
my present condition and I think only
of the joy of seeing the sun rise once
more and of being able to work a little
bit, he wrote.

I am unable to distinguish
between the feeling I have for life
and my way of expressing it.
Overcoming the physical
limitations of ill healthhe used
a wheelchair after his operation
Matisse reinvented himself as an
artist to accommodate his disability
and moved from working with paint
to collage. Aptly calling this period
ma seconde vie, he used scissors
and water-based gouache painted
paper to create vivid cut out collages.
Film footage at the exhibition
shows the artist with a large pair of
tailors scissors cutting into painted
paper with energetic focus and
instinctive precision.
Nicholas Serota, co-curator of the
exhibition and Director of the Tate,
speaks of the apparent simplicity of
Matisses cut outs and also of their
sophistication: People sometimes
say these could be done by a child,
but its only an old man that has this
incredible freedom of mind. That
freedom seems to define the works
on display: vibrant blocks of colour
and simple, exaggerated forms
that capture an expression found
in memory and intuition. Matisse
aspired to creating art that was
tangible and could be felt by every

manit is this thought and feeling

that pulls you into these large-scale
designs.
The exhibition is predominately a
showcase of his collage: the works
serve to illustrate how Matisse arrived
at the concept of cutting into paper.
The Snail (1953), a visual spiral of
coloured shapes, reflects Matisses
awareness of an unfolding that he
described during the compositional
process. There is also a decorative
element to many of the works, some
of which were commissioned, such as
The Parakeet and the Mermaid (1952)
and The Sheaf (1953). His four blue
nudes, shown together in one room,
represent a traditional and timeless
subject that Matisse revisited in a
new medium with a boldness that
stunned his contemporaries. Despite
the flatness and uniform colour of
the nudes, their contours create an
illusion of depth and beauty, sensual
and delightful in their celebration of
the female form.
To produce his ambitious large-scale
work, Matisse was known to instruct
his assistants to finish a piece while he
was drawn to the next idea. He had an
insatiable need to keep creating and
keep working, as if his life, his existence,
and his creations were interdependent.
Matisse, the artist, knew he had been
given time and he intended to live it
through creative expression. His work
was not so much an intellectual pursuit
but more of a necessity, and he valued
his art in the same way as he valued life:
I am unable to distinguish between
the feeling I have for life and my way
of expressing it, he wrote. This vibrant
exhibition reveals the inventiveness
of Matisse in his final years and of
his belief that an artist should never
be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of
style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner
of success.

Jules Morgan
www.thelancet.com Vol 383 May 31, 2014

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without
permission.