12
October 2014 – 8 February 2015
MoMA - The Joan and Preston Robert Tisch
Exhibition Gallery, sixth floor
The Negro Boxer. 1947. Gouache on paper, cut
and pasted.
We missed just missed seeing Henri
Matisse: The Cut-Outs when it did its initial run at the Tate Modern in
London, and we were not going to allow any chance of our missing this
amazing show during its current run at MoMA; so we went to one of the
member's preview days this past weekend...and what an amazing experience it
is! It is being billed in MoMA's online description as
The
largest and most extensive presentation of the cut-outs ever mounted, the
exhibition includes approximately 100 cut-outs—borrowed from public and private
collections around the globe—along with a selection of related drawings,
prints, illustrated books, stained glass, and textiles.
The wonderful catalogue done for the
exhibition (edited by Karl Buchberg, Nicholas
Cullinan, Jodi Hauptman, and Nicholas Serota and published by MoMA; but cheaper to
purchase from Amazon.com) opens with an essay by the editors entitled
"The Studio as Site and Subject," which begins
In a 1952
interview...Matisse describes a cluster of colourful
cut-paper forms pinned to his studio walls as a 'little garden.' 'You
see,' he explains, 'as I am obliged to remain often in bed because of the state
of my health, I have made a little garden all around me where I can walk...
There are leaves, fruits, a bird.'
The state of his health in Matisse's
8th and 9th decades caused him to develop this unusual artistic form and
required he employ assistants to do most of the physical work
involved in the construction of these pieces; but the vision and the creativity
came straight from Matisse himself. MoMA's online description
notes,
The
cut-outs were created in distinct phases. The raw materials—paper and gouache—were purchased, and the two materials combined:
studio assistants painted sheets of paper with gouache. Matisse then cut shapes
from these painted papers and arranged them into compositions. For smaller
compositions the artist worked directly on a board using pins. For larger
compositions, Matisse directed his studio assistants to arrange them on the
wall of his studio. Subsequently, cut-outs were mounted permanently, either in
the studio or in Paris by professional mounters. Subsequently, cut-outs were mounted
permanently, either in the studio or in Paris by professional mounters.
The
Fall of Icarus.
1943. Gouache on paper, cut and pasted, and pins.
In "Inventing a New
Operation, Hauptman describes "Matisse's invention of this new
form--his distinctive approach to a basic set of tools and
materials." Hauptman describes the three elements of his
process:
...what Matisse called his 'cutting out
operation'...was not a simple technique--though it may have started that
way--but a system for thinking about and expanding the possibilities of shape
composition. Distinguishing this operation from painting, Matisse
explains:
It is no
longer the brush that slips and slides over the canvas, it is the scissors that
cut inot the paper and into the color. 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.
What the scissors discovers are the positives and negatives,
reversals and inverses, the organic relations between the shapes. their generation of one from another.
The iterative nature of the cut-outs--the variety of forms
and the resultant multiplicity of potential compositions made possible by
cutting--is extended and enriched by pinning, which itself allows the
works to remain in a tentative or contingent state, all the better to compose
and recompose. Pins of course had a functional purpose: they were used by
Matisse and his assistants to temporarily secure pieces of cut paper to each
other and to boards when he worked on a small scale, or to the walls of his
studio as his work grew larger. Eventually, when the works were ready to
leave the studio...the elements were glued to a paper support that was then
sometimes mounted on canvas. In the studio, however, the pins allowed the
compositions to remain alive.
Composing: While the essential qualities and material logic of the
cut-outs--the scissors' generation of multiple forms and the pins' allowance
for contingency and deferral--were evident even early on when Matisse composed
on his lap making intimate creations of book scale, their transfer to the walls
of his studio marked an important shift, resulting in work that was
environmental, sculptural, relational, boundless. Reconfiguring the
relationship between object and viewer, they were no longer solely to be looked
at but were also to be lived in.
The Sheaf. 1953. Maquette for ceramic (realised 1953). Gouache on paper, cut and
pasted, on paper.
Henri
Matisse: The Cut-Outs was initiated as the result of a decision to
restore MoMA’s monumental cut-out The Swimming Pool acquired
in 1975. MoMA's online description notes
One
morning in the summer of 1952, Matisse told his studio assistant and secretary
Lydia Delectorskaya that “he wanted to see divers,”
so they set out to a favorite pool in Cannes. Suffering under the “blazing
sun,” they returned home, where Matisse declared, “I will make myself my own
pool.” He asked Delectorskaya to ring the walls of
his dining room at the Hôtel Régina
in Nice with a band of white paper, positioned just above the level of his
head, breaking only at the windows and door at opposite ends of the room. The
room itself was lined with tan burlap, a popular wall covering of the time.
Matisse then cut his own divers, swimmers, and sea creatures out of paper
painted in an ultramarine blue. The blue forms were pinned on the white paper,
which helped define the aquatic ballet of bodies, splashing water, and light.
The result
was Matisse’s first and only self-contained, site-specific cut-out. With its
reduction of forms, its dynamic deployment of positives and negatives, and its
lateral expansion across the walls, The Swimming Pool was the
culmination of Matisse’s work in cut paper up until that point. Matisse saw in
paper’s pliability a perfect representation of the fluidity of water, making The
Swimming Pool a perfect melding of subject and means.
MoMA decided to restore this master
work, and to replace the discolored burlap backing with a backing more like the
original color the burlap had been in Matisse's day. (A complete
recounting and discussion of the restoration can be found at www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2014/matisse/the-swimming-pool.html.)
It also recreated a room of the same size as the one Matisse had created it
for, and covered the entire surface of the walls in burlap, as had been the
case in the original room.
There are works of great simplicity,
The Lyre. 1946. Gouache on paper, cut and pasted
Black Leaf on Green Background.
1952. Gouach on paper, cut
and pasted.
and there are some totally wonderful drawings, in addition to
the cut-outs,
Acrobat. 1952. Ink on paper.
and some that became so popular that they were probably
on your dorm room wall...
Blue Nude II. Spring 1952. Gouache
on paper, cut and pasted, on white paper, mounted on canvas.
This is an immensely satisfying and
edifying exhibition...and one you will not want to miss.
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