GEORGINA COBURN evaluates an exhibition of Matisse’s late cut outs.

COMPLETED during a period when Matisse was no longer able to paint, Henri Matisse Drawing With Scissors 1950 -1954 gives valuable insight into the artist’s creative process in a series of 35 lithographic prints derived from the artist’s late cut outs.

Originally reproduced for the French Art Review Verve and published in 1958, four years after Matisse’s death, this collection of works displays the artist’s central preoccupations with bold colour, abstracted form, pattern, design and figurative Classicism.

The act of cutting into paper as an alternative drawing technique is immediate and decisive, allowing a play of elements prior to arriving at the final composition. Although Matisse regarded these late cut outs as finished works in themselves, this exhibition also reads like visual notation – a vital means of design, especially when linked to the artist’s architectural works in stained glass or ceramic mural.

The way that essential elements of composition, line, colour and form are stripped bare in these images will be of particular interest to anyone involved in the crafting of images, regardless of their personal style.

Described by Matisse in terms of resolving “the eternal conflict between drawing and colour”, the artist’s late cut outs resonate largely in terms of distilled composition, infused with his characteristically optimistic and life-affirming palette of vivid blue, orange, yellow, green, red and pink.

The way Matisse is able to express, particularly through the body, an attitude or movement with minimal description is masterful. This quality can be seen in a sequence of the artist’s blue nudes and in a composition with a dancer and two musicians (none of the works in the exhibition are titled). The bare black delineation of the dancer, poised in silhouette, the form of her dress energised with movement, connects with the suggestion of music and the arrangement of yellow scattered leaves which rhythmically frame our reading of all three figures.

In his blue and white nudes, the artist plays with positive and negative space in a way that feels more like sculpted form than an image in two dimensions. An image of a seated nude carved out of the white ground by two carefully placed contoured sections of blue- which completely define the figure, her posture and attitude, is an excellent example.

There is a visible sense of painterly draughtsmanship in the way that the image is pared down, together with a visible representation of the connection made by the artist between “cutting directly into colour” with scissors and “a sculptor carving into stone”.

The blue nudes represent an economy of visual language that amazes in terms of pure expression. Figures are arranged for the (male) gaze, hand behind head, knee bent, or dynamically in flight, dancing. Line is immediately suggestive and deceptively simple. A frieze of figures in blue and white immediately evokes a cult of the body, an aesthetic from ancient Greece or Rome. The morphing of the figures into abstract sinuous curves adds to the sense of hedonism and sensuousness.

Many of these works evoke a sense of grand design, this is particularly true of a series of images in which organic patterns are repeated and the human face is introduced by brush. Theatrical design, a larger tableaux or architectural setting is suggested.

Two compositions of irregular geometric forms, one with the introduction of delicate drawn marks, create a sense of balance between form, line and colour. This is also exemplified in the more complex arrangement of a central figure in ultramarine and orange, held within the image by a harmonious arrangement of colour and form behind.

Every element feels equal within the composition, tightly woven together as part of the essential pattern or tapestry. The strength of the composition held together by bare elements, especially in purely abstract works, is impressive. However there are also pieces of more mediocre quality, reflecting an artist at the peak of his understanding but not necessarily at the height of his powers of execution.

Organised by the Hayward Gallery and the Arts Council England, there is scope within this exhibition for greater contextualisation of the artist’s work, particularly in relation to a wider public audience. It is an exhibition that undoubtedly carries more weight with some awareness of the full scope of the artist’s work; paintings, print making, sculpture and drawings.

Although central themes and techniques are represented, this is a body of work essentially viewed in isolation, with little information about the wider context of Matisse’s oeuvre. While the artist’s exploration of composition is compelling and the spirit of the work undeniably buoyant, there is also something lacking in the visual statement as a whole.

The presentation of the show assumes an aura of prior knowledge, as if a name was enough and does not necessarily encourage accessibility or understanding of context in the supporting material.

© Georgina Coburn, 2010

Links

•  IMAG