Matisse’s Startling Late Works: The Cut-Outs. Tate Modern, 17 April – 7 September 2014

(Published  in  London  Grip,  April  2014  –  kindly  cite  the  original  if  quoting  http://londongrip.co.uk/2014/04/matisses-­‐startling-­‐late-­‐works/)  

 

 Henri  Matisse,  Blue  Nude  II,  1952  

 

No  wonder  Henri  Matisse  is  well  loved.  His  works  are  sensuous,  jubilant,  gorgeous:  they  

envelop  and  immerse  the  viewer  in  voluptuousness,  in  light  that  finds  itself  materialised  as  

coloured  form,  coloured  space.  His  work  is  popular  and  much  of  it  is  well  known;  he  is  

celebrated  for  the  joyous  rhythms,  the  unabashed  pleasure  in  and  of  his  works.  Yet  none  of  

this  foreknowledge  prepares  one  for  the  sheer  delight  –  and  the  wealth  of  information  –  

that  is  afforded  by  the  overwhelming  presence  of  these  cut-­‐outs  seen  en  masse,  and,  so  to  

speak,  ‘in  the  flesh.’  The  Tate  Modern  is  now  holding  the  most  comprehensive  exhibition  

ever  dedicated  to  Matisse’s  papiers  découpés.  It  brings  together  130  works  from  the  final  

chapter  of  the  artist’s  life,  but  these  in  no  way  constitute  what  is  generally  thought  of  as  a  

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‘late  style.’  Their  palpable  vigour,  their  contained,  vernal  joyousness,  and  the  sheer  

cleverness  of  them,  all  belie  any  notion  of  an  artist  in  the  autumn  or  winter  of  his  days.  

Forms  appear  and  are  reiterated  –  birds,  long-­‐fingered  leaves,  sensuous  and  pared  down  

female  torsos,  corkscrews.  Certain  colours  predominate  (cobalt  blue,  cadmium  yellow,  black,  

green,  magenta).  All  this  is  familiar.  Yet  a  closer  inspection  shows  us  that  nothing  is  

predictable,  everything  is  simultaneously  improvised  and  newly  thought  through.  In  short,  if  

one  is  only  familiar  with  Matisse’s  cut-­‐outs  from  reproductions,  nothing  could  prepare  one  

for  a  live  confrontation  with  these  works.  

The  Tate  show  covers  the  last  thirteen  years  of  Matisse’s  life,  when,  after  undergoing  radical  

surgery  for  colon  cancer  at  the  age  of  71,  he  found  himself  at  first  wheelchair  bound,  and  

eventually  bed  bound.  His  bedroom  in  his  villa  Le  Rêve  in  Vence  was  transformed  into  a  

studio  and,  simultaneously,  into  a  reverie  of  outdoor  space  that  he  filled  with  imagined  

bowers  and  paradisiac  paper  gardens.  His  only  tool  was  a  pair  of  long-­‐bladed  scissors,  his  

medium  was  sheets  of  paper  that  his  assistants  would    have  painted  in  a  relatively  limited  

array  of  vivid  and  specific  hues.  His  assistants,  in  particular  the  glamorous,  Russian-­‐born  

Lydia  Delectorskaya,  became  his  prosthetic  limbs,  not  only  the  arms  that  pinned  the  cut-­‐outs  

to  the  wall,  but  also  the  legs  that  danced  about  under  the  artist’s  instruction,  until  the  

precise  position  for  placing  the  cut-­‐out  form  on  the  wall  was  found.  

One  of  the  delights  of  the  exhibition  is  that  it  manages  to  present  these  familiar  images  not  

as  completed,  finished,  closed  works,  but  as  part  of  a  dynamic  work-­‐in-­‐progress;  indeed  

exhibition  and  catalogue  together  create  a  fairly  precise  and  detailed  picture  of  Matisse’s  

working  procedure.  This  entails  showing  us  the  progression  of  these  cut-­‐outs,  from  the  first  

simple  experiments  to  the  final,  sweeping,  synthetic  works  (evocative  at  once  of  stained  

glass  and  modern  tapestry  –  it  is  no  coincidence  that  Matisse’s  work  was  so  readily  

translated  into  both  glass  and  textile).  But  this  focus  on  working  methods  and  procedure  

also  entails  a  backward  glance,  a  nod  towards  the  significant  pre-­‐history  of  the  cut-­‐out  in  

Matisse’s  practice.  We  see  the  origins  of  the  autonomous  cut-­‐outs  in  much  earlier  works  

where,  in  his  search  for  the  perfectly  balanced  (which  is  not  to  say  symmetrical)  still  life  

composition  –  unlike  his  prickly  contemporary  Picasso,  Matisse  believed  art  should  be  as  

comfortable  as  an  armchair  –  Matisse  would  cut  forms  out  of  stiff  paper  and  pin  them  onto  

the  canvas,  playing  around  with  the  placement,  scale  and  degree  of  overlap  of  the  forms  

that  he  was  then  finally  to  fix  in  an  apparently  ‘spontaneous’  painting.  The  countless  pin-­‐

pricks  visible  in  all  the  finished  works  are  evidence  of  this  provisional  practice,  in  the  early  

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cut-­‐outs  rehearsing  the  overall  shape  of  the  painting  before  committing  the  individual  forms  

to  their  assigned  place  in  a  composition,  in  the  late  cut-­‐outs  essaying  the  most  economic,  

succinct,  evocative,  lyrical  way  of  using  those  forms.  

But  there  is  much  more  that  seeing  these  works  together,  and  ‘live,’  yields.  For  one,  there  is  

the  tremendous  variety  of  scale,  from  the  small  designs  for  artists’  book  and  magazines  

(Jazz,  Verve)  to  the  vast,  wall-­‐sized  decorative  compositions  (Large  Decoration  with  Masks,  

1953).  Then,  reproduction  belies  the  surface  of  the  works,  suggesting  that  each  coloured  

shape  is  uniformly  flat.  In  fact,  because  the  paper  that  Matisse  uses  for  the  cut-­‐outs  is  hand  

painted,  and  these  matte,  gouache  surfaces  frequently  retain  the  traces  of  the  manual  

gesture  entailed  in  the  application  of  the  pigment,  as  well  as,  more  surprisingly,  degrees  of  

transparency  and  opacity.  In  this  sense,  the  cut-­‐outs  speak  directly  to  Matisse’s  paintings,  

where  brushy  areas  of  luminous  colour  are  played  off  against  areas  that  are  denser,  dryer.  

Then,  there  are  the  tiny,  jagged  cut  edges  that  retain  the  trace  and  memory  of  scissors  

working  their  way  around  a  shape.  Nothing  could  more  concisely  contain  the  energy  of  

making  in  reduced  physical  circumstances:  these  edges  hold  a  degree  of  dynamism  that  is  

belied  by  the  flatness  of  reproduction.  Finally,  in  addition  to  the  pin  pricks,  pencil  marks  

within  the  compositions,  together  with  areas  where  a  shape  will  have  been  composed  of  

various  overlaid  bits  of  paper  rather  than  simply  being  cut  out  in  a  single  ‘sitting’,  attest  to  

the  experimental,  improvisatory  and  dynamic  nature  of  Matisse’s  facture.  

Matisse  frequently  spoke  of  ‘the  eternal  conflict  of  drawing  and  colour’,  and  through  the  

different  phases  of  his  work,  line  and  colour  have  enjoyed  varied  forms  of  reciprocation.  The  

film  clips  included  in  the  exhibition,  showing  Matisse  wielding  his  scissors  in  his  wheelchair,  

triangulate  this  essential  binary  term  drawing/colour.  Watching  the  forms  fall  from  his  

scissors,  one  becomes  aware  that  cutting  is  not  only  a  means  of  drawing,  but  also  a  means  

of  cutting  away,  and  as  such,  it  performs  an  exploration  of  three-­‐dimensional  space.  Later  

artists  have  played  with  these  two  potentialities  of  the  cut-­‐out  –  I  am  thinking  of  Kara  

Walker  and,  more  interestingly,  William  Kentridge  –  but  here  in  Matisse  one  sees  the  

earliest  germs  of  an  entirely  innovative  exploration  of  three-­‐dimensional  space,  using  the  

most  unpredictable  and  apparently  two-­‐dimensional  of  means.  The  sculptural  potential  of  

the  cut-­‐out  is  least  convincing  where,  in  some  of  his  later  works,  Matisse  layers  decoratively  

cut  forms  on  top  of  each  other,  or  where  his  drawing  with  cut  paper  creates  a  diagonal  that  

ostensibly  displaces  three-­‐dimensional  space,  as  in  the  table  in  Zulma  (1950).  The  outcome  

is  certainly  one  of  greater  complexity,  but  it  is  perhaps  the  startling  simplicity  that  

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constitutes  Matisse’s  boldest  contribution.  While  creating  a  shallow  but  distinctly  three-­‐

dimensional  space,  in  these  layered  works,  the  whole  remains  intrinsically  pictorial.  

It  is  in  those  most  pared  down,  and  apparently  insubstantial  of  late  works,  the  blue  

monochrome  figures  of  the  four  female  nudes  (1952),  that  a  sculptural  exploration  becomes  

most  explicit,  to  the  extent  that  the  curators,  Nicholas  Serrota  and  Nicholas  Cullinan,  have  

included  some  of  Matisse’s  own  early  sculptures  of  female  nudes  in  vitrines  alongside  these  

blue  figures,  to  press  the  point  home.  The  juxtaposition  is  breathtaking,  and  highlights  what  

is  already  evident  in  the  flattened  nudes.  Here,  gaps  and  incisions  in  the  sensuous  volumes  

bring  the  white  of  the  ground  in  to  wrap  around  or  interrupt  the  cobalt  figure,  in  a  process  

that  Matisse  called  ‘aeration.’  Cut  and  flat  shape  join  forces  to  stand  in  for  the  body’s  yogic  

twists  and  loops  through  space.  

Indeed,  the  rhythmic  organisation  of  form  against  ground  makes  even  the  concept  of  

‘ground’  in  Matisse’s  cut-­‐outs  spurious.  Not  only  does  the  white  of  the  surface  sing  out  as  an  

important  colour,  but  the  negative  shapes  that  it  forms  become  legible  as  decorative  

elements  in  their  own  right.  In  Matisse’s  use  of  the  reversed  sections  of  cut  papers,  and  in  

the  judicious  interplay  of  edges  (he  is  particularly  clever  in  his  manipulation  of  what  goes  on  

at  the  very  outer  edge  of  the  image,  the  place  where  it  ostensibly  ‘finishes’),  the  notions  of  

‘figure’  and  ‘ground’  become  both  reversible  and  exchangeable.  Look,  for  instance,  at  all  the  

overlaps  and  edges  in  the  well  known  plates  for  the  book  Jazz  (1947),  such  as  The  Knife  

Thrower  (Plate  XV)  or  Lagoon  (Plate  XVII,  image  below).  

 Henri  Matisse,  Lagoon,  Plate  XVII  from  Jazz.  

 

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Near  the  end  of  the  exhibition,  the  familiar  and  always  fresh  large  Snail  from  the  Tate’s  own  

collection,  continues  to  surprise.  For  here,  the  process  of  cutting  has  become  rougher,  more  

impatient,  and  other  than  a  sly  visual  joke  in  the  small  cut-­‐out  snail  shape  top  left,  drawing,  

colour  and  shaping  are,  so  to  speak,  unpacked  and  dismembered.  Here,  in  other  words,  the  

shapes  are  no  longer  cut  out  to  describe  forms;  rather,  the  descriptive  form  is  reassembled  

out  of  purely  abstract  shapes,  squares  spiralling  slowly  to  evoke  the  essence  of  ‘snailness.’  

And  where  the  Oceania  murals  were  obviously  the  flowering  of  a  memory  of  his  trip  to  

Oceania,  the  later  work  Memory  of  Oceania,  sister  work  to  Snail  and  dated  from  

approximately  the  same  time,  contains  perhaps  the  most  boldly  abstract  of  Matisse’s  cut-­‐

out  designs,  with  slivers  and  blocks  of  colour,  broad  areas  of  white,  and  several  organic  but  

mysterious  charcoal  lines  suggesting  a  memory  of  movement  at  one  further  remove  from  

figuration,  disassembled,  free-­‐floating,  almost  the  dream  of  a  representation,  but  pointing  

the  way  to  a  generation  of  new  painters  who,  especially  in  America,  would,  in  the  1950s,  

take  up  where  Matisse  left  off.  

   Henri  Matisse,  Memory  of  Oceania,  1952-­‐3  

 

Ruth  Rosengarten  ©  April  2014.