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
thinking 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
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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 in 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 cutouts, 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.
CONSIDER
SLIDE 7: SWIMMING POOL, About 6 feet tall and 54 feet long,
1952
 How might you describe the swimmers in
Matisse’s pool?
 Can you find one area where a swimmer is blue
and another where a swimmer is white?
 Pretend you are inside this artwork. What does it
feel like?
Matisse took time to consider and reflect on his artwork before
pasting shapes down. He made changes until the very end. Matisse made
the Swimming Pool to decorate the walls of his dining room in Nice. At the
far left side of the mural, Matisse cut out blue bathers viewed from many
different angles and perspectives and pinned them to the white
background. He used burlap, a rough, brown fabric to line the walls. By
the end of the mural, the swimmers dissolve into the background so that
the blue shapes define the splashing water and the negative white space
forms the shape of the swimmers.
Matisse loved the sun and the sea. He loved living in the south of
France. He said: “I have always adored the sea and now that I can no
longer go for a swim, I have surrounded myself with it.”
Swimming Pool is owned by The Museum of Modern Art in New York
City. It is very fragile and it hasn’t been exhibited in many years, but art
conservators at the museum have been working to clean and repair it so
that we can see it exhibited exactly how Matisse had it arranged in his
dining room in France.
NOW IT’S TIME TO CREATE A CUT-OUT!!!!!!