HENRI MATISSE: THE 6 C’S OF CUT -OUTS: COLOR, CUT, COMPOSE, COLLABORATE, CONSIDER, CREATE!! SLIDE 1: RED STUDIO, Oil on canvas, 5ft 11in x 7ft 2in, 1911 Henri Matisse was born on New Year’s Eve in 1869, almost 150 years ago. Matisse didn’t grow up wanting to be an artist. He was raised in a small town in northern France and, at the encouragement of his parents, he went to Paris to study law. When he was 20, he became sick with appendicitis. While he recovered, his mother brought him art supplies to help him pass the time. Matisse decided then to become an artist. He found his passion, and he called making art “a kind of paradise.” Can anyone guess what this painting is titled? Does anyone know what this room is used for? This is a painting by Matisse called Red Studio , from 1911. We can visit this painting at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. In this work, he’s reproduced his studio and the paintings and sculptures that he’s made in his studio. Matisse rendered his paintings and sculptures realistically in color, but the furnishings in the room are all red, outlined in white, as if they’ve been scratched out of the painting’s surface. The vibrant red holds everything together. Matisse said: “I find that all these things…only become what they are to me when I see them together with the color red.”
SLIDE 2: Matisse in his studio in 1952, making paper cut outs Matisse became a famous artist during his lifetime, and he was known mostly as a painter. His artwork changed throughout his life because Matisse was always thinking about how best to express his ideas as an artist. When he was older, Matisse moved to the south of France where it was warm and where he could be near the sea. When he was about 70 years old, he became ill and spent most of his time confined to bed or a wheelchair. Painting wasn’t possible, and he wondered how to continue as an artist. Slowly Matisse started to decorate the walls of his room with colorful shapes that he cut from paper. Soon, he realized that he had invented a new type of art – the cut-out -- and a new, bold way to express his ideas. Matisse said: “You see as I am obliged to remain often in bed because of the state of my health, I have made a little garden all round me where I can walk…There are leaves, fruits, a bird.” Matisse had a system for making the cut-outs. First, he asked his assistants in the studio to brush white paper with brightly colored paint called gouache. Once he had lots of dry painted paper available to him, he would cut out elements and place them into compositions. Sometimes he planned to cut out something specific, and other times he would cut without planning or th inking first. Because he couldn’t draw lines with pencils or a brush, he called the act of cutting directly into the color “Drawing with Scissors.”
COLOR SLIDE 3: HORSE, RIDER AND CLOWN, gouache on paper, 1943 Can you describe what you see? How would you describe the colors in this artwork? Why might an artist make a horse purple? How is this artwork similar/different from Red Studio (Slide 1) This is one of the first cut-outs made by Matisse. He made it, along with 19 other images, for a book called Jazz. He was 73 years old. The book also has lots of writing, done in Matisse’s cursive handwriting , but the book is not about Jazz music at all. It’s about Matisse’s feelings about being an artist. The book was named by Matisse’s publisher i n Paris. In 1941, Matisse said “I finally came to consider colors as forces, to be assembled as inspiration dictates…All the colors sing together; their strength is determined by the needs of the chorus.” Matisse felt that all colors could work together, and that we see colors differently depending on how we arrange them. Unlike artists before him, Matisse felt that he could put extremely bright and expressive colors side by side. Cut-outs enabled him to explore his ideas about color very deeply.
CUT SLIDE 4: SWORD SWALLOWER , from the portfolio Jazz, 1947 What kinds of shapes make up this picture?(angled,straight, round, twisting and turning, curvy…) What things do you recognize in this artwork? What things seem new to you? This cut-out is called Sword Swallower . It is a composition made up of lots of abstract shapes that are layered together to make the image into something we can recognize. The sword swallower has a large, bald white head. His eye looks like a flower or an under-the-sea creature. He’s leaning back. The swords that he’s swallowing make his throat swell. He looks uncomfortable. When Matisse began to cut paper, often he had in mind something specific, like the head of a person. Other times, he allowed his imagination to follow his scissors. But he always found a way to use the shapes that he cut, and the scraps, as well. Another way to describe this method would be that Matisse used both positive and negative shapes in his finished compositions. He would cut shapes into the paper, but he would also cut shapes and holes out of the paper, and then use what was left. And then he would often layer his cuttings one on top of the other. Even though Matisse thought a lot about what he wanted his artwork to look like, he never worried that his cutting had to be perfect or straight. In fact, he relished the freedom from perfect lines that come with cutting with scissors. When art looks unfinished or imperfect, an artist like Matisse is telling us that it’s spontaneous, free and handmade – even if, to the contrary, making it took lots of planning and time.
COMPOSE SLIDE 5: THE SNAIL , nearly 9.5 feet square, 1953 Without revealing the title, how would you describe this artwork to a person who couldn’t see it? (Now, reveal the title to the children) Now, knowing the title, how would you change your description to the person who can’t see it? This is one of Matisse’s last pictures. He made it in 1953 when he was 83 years old. It’s enormous! Along with two other cut-outs, Matisse meant it to fill an entire wall so that it would be like a mural. He wanted the cut-outs to be part of our space, our environment, to live and breathe with us. Matisse took time and care in composing the colored shapes of paper into a composition. For The Snail, he drew the shape of a snail’s shell over and over again until he was able to take its form apart and reinvent it. The concentric pattern of uneven rectangles echo the spiral pattern of a snail’s shell. The long blue rectangle in the lower left corner is kind of like the snail’s slimy body. Matisse said: “I first of all drew the snail from nature, holding it. I became aware of an unrolling, I found an image in my mind purified of the shell, then I took the scissors.”
COLLABORATE SLIDE 6: THE FALL OF ICARUS , 11 in x 14 in, gouache, paper and pins, 1943 What does collaborate mean? How might an artist collaborate in the studio? What do you think is happening to the person in this artwork? The red and the yellow shapes look similar. What do you think they represent? Do you know the story of the Greek god Icarus? Henri Matisse did not work alone. He needed lots of help from assistants to make the cut-outs. Some assistants painted white sheets of paper with brightly colored gouache. Matisse asked others to hammer shapes to the wall or a background with pins. They wore the hammers on strings around their necks so their hands could be free. In his larger cut- outs, assistants even had to stand on ladders to pin shapes at the top of the artwork. Matisse asked his studio assistants to move around the shapes a lot, sometimes even from one artwork to another one. Art conservators found almost 1000 pin holes in a single cut-out, proving that Matisse changed his compositions over and over again until he was satisfied. His studio assistants traced the finished work and sent it to Paris to be glued down. The pins and nails are still visible in this cut-out, entitled The Fall of Icarus. Icarus is a character in Greek mythology. He built wings from wax in order to escape from the island of Crete, but he flew too high and the heat of the sun melted his wings and he fell into the sea. Matisse cut Icarus out as a simple shape, and yet he’s able to make him look drooping and about to fall from the sky. The simple figure on a black background is called a silhouette.
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