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Outline
Rearrange "The war years," add new section: The cut-outs
 * Introduction (influence, process, origin)
 * Key works (Jazz, Swimming Pool, Blue Nude series, Vence chapel)
 * Tate and MoMA exhibitions

The cut-outs
Diagnosed with abdominal cancer in 1941, Matisse underwent surgery that left him chair and bed bound. Painting and sculpture had become physical challenges, so he turned to a new type of medium. With the help of his assistants, he began creating cut paper collages, or decoupage. He would cut sheets of paper, pre-painted with gouache by his assistants, into shapes of varying colors and sizes, and arrange them to form lively compositions. Initially, these pieces were modest in size, but eventually transformed into mural or room-size works. The result was a distinct and dimensional complexity—art not quite painting, but not quite sculpture.

Although the paper cut-out was Matisse’s major medium in the final decade of his life, his first recorded use of the technique was in the 1930s during the planning of The Dance II, a mural painted and installed at the Barnes Foundation. Albert C. Barnes arranged for cardboard templates to be made of the unusual dimensions of the walls onto which Matisse, in his studio in Nice, fixed the composition of painted paper shapes. Another early cut-out was made between 1937 and 1938, while Matisse was working on the stage sets and costumes for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. However, it was only after his operation that, bedridden, Matisse began to develop the cut-out technique as its own form, rather than its prior utilitarian origin.

He moved to the hilltop of Vence in 1943, where he produced his first major cut-out project for his artist's book titled Jazz. However, these cut-outs were conceived as designs for stencil prints to be looked at in the book, rather than as independent pictorial works. At this point, Matisse still thought of the cut-outs as separate from his principal art form. His new understanding of this medium unfolds with the 1946 introduction for Jazz. After summarizing his career, Matisse refers to the possibilities the cut-out technique offers, insisting “An artist must never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of a style, prisoner of a reputation, prisoner of success…”

The number of independently conceived cut-outs steadily increased following Jazz, and eventually led to the creation of mural-size works, such as Oceania the Sky and Oceania the Sea of 1946. Under Matisse’s direction, Lydia Delectorskaya, his studio assistant, loosely pinned the silhouettes of birds, fish, and marine vegetation directly onto the walls of the room. His first cut-outs of this scale, the two Oceania pieces evoked a trip to Tahiti he made years before.

The Chapel and museum
In 1948, Matisse began to prepare designs for the Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence, which allowed him to expand this technique within a truly decorative context. The experience of designing the chapel windows, chasubles, and tabernacle door—all planned using the cut-out method—had the effect of consolidating the medium as his primary focus. Finishing his last painting in 1951 (and final sculpture the year before), Matisse utilized the paper cut-out as his sole medium for expression up until his death.

The exhibitions Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs was first exhibited at London’s Tate Modern, from April to September of 2014. The show was the largest and most extensive of the cut-outs ever mounted, including approximately 100 paper maquettes—borrowed from international public and private collections—as well as a selection of related drawings, prints, illustrated books, stained glass, and textiles. In total, the retrospective featured 130 works encompassing his practice from 1937 to 1954. The Tate Modern show was the first in its history to attract more than half a million people.

The show then traveled to New York’s Museum of Modern Art, where it was on display through February 10, 2015. The newly conserved cut-out, The Swimming Pool, which had been off view for more than 20 years prior, returned to the galleries as the centerpiece of the exhibition.


 * Exhibition on Screen
 * The Museum of Modern Art’s Matisse retrospective was part of the film series “Exhibition on Screen,” which broadcasts productions to movie theaters.


 * Although none of it is live, the film, “Matisse From MoMA and Tate Modern,” combines high-definition footage of the galleries with commentary from curators, museum administrators and, through narration of words from the past, Matisse himself.


 * “We want to show the exhibition as well as we possibly can to the audience who can’t get there,” said director Phil Grabsky. Inspired by a similar “event cinema” produced by the Met, Mr. Grabsky started his series to simulate the experience of strolling through an art exhibit.

The Blue Nudes The Blue Nudes refer to a series of cut-outs by Henri Matisse. Completed in 1952, they represent seated female nudes, and are among Matisse’s final body of works. Blue Nude IV, the first of the four, took a notebook of studies and two weeks work of cutting and arranging before it satisfied him. The pose he finally arrived at for all four works—intertwining legs and an arm stretching behind the neck—was his favorite. The posture is similar to a number of seated nudes from the first half of the 1920s, and ultimately derives from the reposed figures of Le bonheur de vivre.

The Blue Nudes also reflect Matisse’s earlier sculptures. Despite the flatness of paper, they are sculptural in their tangible, relief-like quality, as well as the sense of volume created by the overlapping. Blue Nude I in particular can be compared with sculptures like La Serpentine of 1909.

The artwork was shown at the Museum of Modern Art as part of the exhibition Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs, which was on view from October 12, 2014 to February 10, 2015.

Jazz

Original creation
Diagnosed with abdominal cancer in 1941, Matisse underwent surgery that left him chair and bed bound. Limited in mobility, he could no longer paint or sculpt. Instead, he cut forms from colored paper that he arranged as collages, which became known as the “cut-outs.”

That same year, at the age of 74, Matisse began Jazz, a portfolio of works characterized by vibrant colors, poetic texts, and circus and theater themes. His assistants helped prepare the collages for printing, using a stencil process known as pochoir in French. He worked on the series for two years, utilizing this new method that linked drawing and color—two important elements in Matisse’s work.

The designs were initally intended as covers for Verve, a French art magazine published by Tériade. In 1947, Tériade issued the compositions in an artist’s portfolio. The book included 20 color prints, each about 16 by 26 inches, as well as Matisse’s handwritten notes expressing his thoughts throughout the process. Tériade gave it the title Jazz, which Matisse liked because it suggested a connection between art and musical improvisation. Despite the low number of books printed, Jazz was well-received.

The circus, the title originally suggested for the book, provided inspiration for the majority of the motifs concerning performing artists and balancing acts. “These images, with their lively and violent tones, derive from crystallizations of memories of circuses, folktales, and voyages,” Matisse explains in the accompanying text. The figure of the circus artist, usually depicted alone, is often seen as a metaphor for the artist himself.

The first prints illustrating the circus do not seem to have an immediate connection to the succeeding works. However, these compositions are viewed as metaphors of life. The overall themes in Jazz derive from biographical elements, such as Matisse's recollection of his travels to Tahiti in the Lagoons (XVII-XIX), as well as broader aspects including love (V, VI), death (X), and fate (XVI).

List of prints
The titles of the individual sheets, together with supplementary explanations by his assistant Lydia Delectorskaya, in English translation are:

I The Clown

II The Circus

III Monsieur Loyal (a well-known Parisian circus director in the nineteenth century)

IV The Nightmare of the White Elephant

V The Horse, the Rider and Clown

VI The Wolf (i.e. the wolf from Red Riding Hood, the fairy tale by Charles Perrault. It is also an allusion to Hitler, i.e. contemporary history)

VII The Heart

VIII Icarus

IX Forms

X Pierrot's Funeral

XI The Codomas (two famous trapeze artists)

XII The Swimmer in the Tank (a memory of a performance Matisse saw in the aquarium of the Folies-Bergère)

XIII The Sword Swallower

XIV The Cowboy

XV The Knife Thrower

XVI Destiny

XVII Lagoon I

XVIII Lagoon II

XIX Lagoon III

XX Toboggan (slide)