‘Painting with scissors’: Matisse and creativity in illness

Abstract

A review of the exhibition ‘Henri Matisse: the Cut-Outs’ which is at Tate Modern, 17 April – 7 September 2014 This exhibition is, according to the Tate Modern's website, ‘the most comprehensive exhibition ever devoted to the artist's paper cut-outs made between 1943 and 1954. In a career spanning over half a century, Matisse made a large body of work of which the cut-outs are a brilliant final chapter in his long career.’1 Matisse employed the cut-out technique as a response to being confined to a wheelchair following surgery for cancer, with which he was diagnosed in 1941. As the Henri Matisse website explains, ‘Matisse's extraordinary creativity was not be dampened for long. “Une seconde vie”, a second life, was what he called the last fourteen years of his life. Following an operation he found renewed and unexpected energies and the beautiful Russian-born assistant, Lydia Delectorskaya, to keep him company. Vast in scale (though not always in size), lush and rigorous in colour, his cut-outs are among the most admired and influential works of Matisse's entire career. They belong with the grandest affirmations of the elan vital in Western art.’ This website contains further fascinating detail of the creative process Matisse employed.2 The National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, which hosted the exhibition several years ago, explains, ‘Henri Matisse developed his final artistic triumph by “cutting into color.” The drama, scale, and innovation of Matisse's rare and fragile papiers coupes (paper cutouts) remain without precedent or parallel. His technique involved the freehand cutting of colored papers into beautiful shapes, which he then pinned loosely to the white studio walls, later adjusting, recutting, combining, and recombining them to his satisfaction. The result created an environment that transcended the boundaries of conventional painting, drawing, and sculpture. Later, the shapes were glued to large white paper backgrounds for shipping or display.’3 The work was certainly shaped by the limitations that his illness placed on Matisse's mobility. As he once explained, ‘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 around me where I can walk… There are leaves, fruits, a bird.’ However, this work was not simply a consolation prize for a man dealing with illness. As he explained: ‘I have needed all that time to reach the stage where I can say what I want to say… Only what I created after the illness constitutes my real self: free, liberated.’ Cut-outs are now widely used with children as a basic way to teach and learn ideation. Many teachers use the famous image of Icarus and cut him into different pieces. At this point, they are copied onto a piece of paper. Children then cut them out and can assemble their own fantasy shapes with them. They then stick it onto a blue background, name the pictures and write a story to illustrate their picture. Only afterwards does the teacher show them the original Icarus picture by Matisse. Children come up with fabulous ideas like ‘surfing dogs’, ‘school bus’ or ‘mermaids’, as the shapes can be assembled in so many different ways. One highlight of the exhibition for me was the section based on his 1947 book Jazz, which was prepared while the Second World War was raging. I found it really absorbing, with Matisse's philosophy of life spelled out in French and beautifully illustrated. All-in-all, I felt that the exhibition drew me in and really involved me in the life of an older, ill man who refused to allow his disability to limit his creativity.