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Shape Packet
Table of Contents/ Checklist
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Points
Comments
Vocabulary/ Notes Sheet
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Art Article and Questions for Matisse
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Technique Exercises---------------------------------------------------------------------------------Shape Vocabulary Drawings
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Shape Practice Worksheet # 1
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Shape Practice Worksheet # 2
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Art Project---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Rubric and Assignment
Details
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Shape Design
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Rubric and Assignment
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Early Finishers Worksheets
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Shape Vocabulary
Shape:
Two-Dimensional (2D):
Organic Shapes:
Geometric Shapes:
Positive Space:
Negative Space:
Figure:
Ground:
Shape Worksheet
Square:
Circle:
Ellipse/Oval:
Triangle:
Rectangle:
Trapezoid:
Organic Curving:
Organic Straight:
The New York Times
May 21, 2005
With No Time for Twilight, Matisse Filled Old Age with Vibrant Colors
By ALAN RIDING
PARIS, May 18 - Henri Matisse had good reason to feel morose in early 1941. France was under
German occupation; his wife, Amélie, had left him; and he was suffering from cancer. Before
undergoing a risky operation in Lyon, he wrote an anxious letter to his son, Pierre, insisting, "I
love my family, truly, dearly and profoundly." He left another letter, to be delivered in the event
of his death, making peace with Amélie.
But when the surgery was successful, Matisse quickly bounced back, declaring that he had won
"a second life" and, at 71, led his art in remarkable new directions. He had a beautiful Russianborn assistant, Lydia Delectorskaya, to keep him company. And while ill health later returned to
slow him down, he remained optimistic until his death in Nice on Nov. 3, 1954, just a few weeks
short of his 85th birthday.
"I haven't much to complain about," he wrote to his old friend André Rouveyre on Sept. 19 of
that year. "When I find something is not going well, I look in some satisfying corner and I find I
have no reason to complain." And he added: "We have good friends - can one ask for more? I am
still working a bit and I observe that its quality has not fallen, thanks to good discipline. But one
must remain modest."
The 13 fruitful years that he unexpectedly gained after his cancer operation are the focus of
"Matisse: A Second Life," an invigorating new exhibition at the Musée de Luxembourg here
through July 17. It shows him drawing incessantly, painting sporadically, rediscovering the
medium of paper cutouts and preparing what he would consider his masterpiece, the paintings
and stained-glass windows of the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence, near Nice.
It also offers fresh evidence of how aged creators can remain energized by their art. Titian and
Monet were also painting in their 80's, Picasso and Chagall even into their 90's. Verdi composed
"Falstaff" when he was 80; Richard Strauss wrote his "Four Last Songs" at 84. John Huston was
80 when he directed his last movie, "The Dead." And many writers keep going: Saul Bellow,
who died last month at 89, published his last novel only five years ago.
Still, this is the first time that Matisse's late years have been examined in France. The show's
Danish curator, Hanne Finsen, writes in the catalog that she has long been fascinated by how,
once great artists reach an advanced age, they often forget commercial considerations and
display "extraordinary freedom." This autumnal flowering is what she explores in "Matisse: A
Second Life," which travels to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark this summer.
She is helped enormously by Matisse's own words, presented here through his intense
correspondence with Rouveyre, a bohemian artist and novelist whom he first met at the École
des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1892 and who became an intimate friend after 1941. Matisse's letters
to Rouveyre, which number more than 1,200 and were donated to the Royal Library in Denmark,
serve as a first-person running commentary on his work, health and state of mind.
His letters and their envelopes are themselves small works of art: the letters often include
drawings and poems, while most envelopes are decorated with flowers, stars and baroque
handwriting. There is also humor. The fact that Rouveyre lived for some of the time at a
boarding house called "La Joie de Vivre" encouraged Matisse to play word games with the
address. On one envelope, he simply wrote: "Monseiur Rouveyre, Somewhere in France."
Rouveyre himself is present in the show through several sketched portraits, as well as a CartierBresson photograph of him sitting for Matisse. But Rouveyre also serves as the artist's sounding
board: after Matisse sent him 21 pen-and-ink drawings of trees, an accompanying letter
explained the experiment. "I am told that Chinese teachers taught their students that when you
want to draw a tree, feel as if you were climbing it when you start at the bottom," he wrote.
Matisse's art evidently helped him keep the war at bay, not least in 1944, when Amélie was
arrested, and his daughter, Marguerite, was sent to a concentration camp for Resistance
activities. While both survived, Matisse had no word of their whereabouts for months on end.
Nonetheless, he found solace in the bright colors that had always distinguished his painting. And
along with some still lifes, he painted and sketched sensual nudes and couples.
In response to remarks that he was too old to be engaged in erotic art, he wrote to Rouveyre,
"Why, if my feeling of freshness, of beauty, of youth remains the same as it was 30 years ago in
front of flowers, a fine sky or an elegant tree, why should it be different with a young girl?"
Among his first adventures with paper cutouts was a cheerful book called "Jazz," which Matisse
prepared during the war but which was only published in 1947. The lively multicolor forms, both
abstract and figurative, seem to echo the voice of a man stubbornly refusing to be cowed by the
times. But he was also enchanted by the technique. "The walls of my bedroom are covered with
cutouts," he wrote to Rouveyre in 1948. "I still don't know what I'll do with them."
Soon afterward, though, it was by using cutouts that he designed the stained-glass windows for
the Chapel of the Rosary, a project he took on as a gesture to a young woman who had nursed
him in Lyon in 1941 and later became a Dominican nun. The small modern building on the
grounds of the Dominican nuns' residence in Vence took almost four years to complete. It was,
Matisse said, the production of "an entire life of work."
Two of the three windows show large yellow and blue leaves against a green background, but the
window behind the altar - the study for it is on loan here from the Vatican Museums - is more
ambitious: it represents "The Tree of Life," with flowering cactuses and blue leaves scattered
across a green curtain hanging over a yellow window.
Still more testing for this octogenarian artist were the chapel's paintings: three large figures,
including "Virgin and Child," as well as 14 Stations of the Cross painted on white ceramic tiles.
Studies for these works, which are included in this exhibition, illustrate how Matisse began with
detailed drawings and gradually reduced them to a handful of black brush strokes.
The chapel exhausted Matisse, who by then was unable to stand for long periods and had to
attach his paint brush to a long pole. But in his home, sitting on his bed or in a wheelchair, he
continued to make gouache cutouts. After Rouveyre teased him for embracing religion, Matisse
urged his friend to look at his cutout of a naked woman, "Zulma," at the May Salon in Paris in
1950: "You will see the awakening of the converted," was his retort.
The final cutout in this exhibition, "La Gerbe," multicolored leaves that resemble a spray of
flowers, was completed a few months before his death, but it explodes with life. The artist who
almost reinvented color in painting had by now found freedom in the simplicity of decoration. "I
have the mastery of it," he told Rouveyre in a letter. "I am sure of it."
Assessment Rubric
Student Name:
Class Period:
Assignment: Shape Collage
Date Completed:
Write the number in
pencil that best
shows how well you
feel that you
completed that
criterion for the
assignment.
Excellent
Good
Average
Needs
Improvement
Criteria 1 – shape
collage has all
organic OR
geometric shapes
10
9–8
7
6 or less
Criteria 2 – collage
shows creativity
and thought in
composition
10
9–8
7
6 or less
Criteria 3 – collage
shapes are varied
and plentiful, using
all of the materials
provided
10
9–8
7
6 or less
Criteria 4 – Effort:
took time to develop
idea & complete
project? (Didn’t
rush.) Good use of
class time?
10
9–8
7
6 or less
Criteria 5 –
Craftsmanship –
Neat, clean &
complete? Skillful
use of the art tools
& media?
10
9–8
7
6 or less
Total: 50
x 2 = 100
(possible
points)
Grade:
Teacher Comments:
Rate
Yourself
Teacher’s
Rating
Your
Total
Teacher
Total
Early Finishers Shape Worksheets
The following pages include step by step directions for creating cartoon animals using simple
shapes and adding details. Use the space at the bottom of each sheet to try your hand at
recreating these fun animals. Feel free to add backgrounds or features that you believe will
enhance your drawings. Each cartoon is worth 10 pts.