THE ART OF
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TEACHING RESOURCE
Exhibition On Screen: MATISSE
Contents
Exhibition On Screen: Matisse 1
About Tate Modern 2
About MoMA 2
Biography 3
Matisse’s style 4
Fauvism 4
Nice period 5
Cut-out 6
Colour 7
Matisse’s work 8
Visual arts glossary 13
Creative activities 14
References
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Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs is a collaboration between Tate
Modern and MoMA. From snow-flowers to dancers, circus
scenes and a famous snail, the exhibition at MoMA and TATE
showcases a dazzling array of 120 works made between
1936 and 1954. Bold, exuberant and often large in scale, the
cut-outs have an engaging simplicity, coupled with incredible
creative sophistication.
The Cut-Outs focuses on the last decade of Matisse’s life, an
intense period of activity. During this time he was developing
an entirely new and different way of making art. This period
produced some of the most iconic pieces of the 20th century.
The pictures are hung as a cluster to mimic how Matisse hung
his works in his studio. There are small works, building to
bigger works that fill whole rooms. Each piece has been hung
to allow the viewer space, to stand back and view the piece to
see the work, sense what the work is telling them.
COUNTRY ARTS SA
This resource has been produced as part of Country Arts SA’s
Arts On Screen Program for the 2016 screening of Matisse.
For more information on Country Arts SA visit www.countryarts.org.au
Resource written by Robyn Brookes. © Copyright 2016 Country Arts SA.
COUNTRY ARTS SA TEACHER RESOURCE KIT – MATISSE
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“The work is an emanation - ‘the projection
of self’. My drawings and my canvases are
pieces of myself. Their totality constitutes
only Matisse. The work represents, expresses,
perpetuates.
I have always believed that a large part of
the beauty of a picture arises from the
struggle which an artist wages with his
limited medium. Scissors can acquire more
feeling for line than pencil or charcoal. Cutting
directly into colour reminds me of a sculptors
carving into stone. The cut-out is what I have
now found the simplest and most direct way
to express myself.”
Henri Matisse
The exhibition marks an historic moment, when Matisse’s
treasures from around the world can be seen together. The
Snail (1953) is shown alongside its sister work Memory of
Oceania (1953) and Large Composition with Masks (1953)
at 10 metres long. A photograph of Matisse’s studio reveals
that these works were initially conceived as a unified
whole, and this is the first time they will have been together
in over 50 years. The exhibition also places side by side
the largest number of Matisse’s famous Blue Nudes ever
exhibited together. About Tate Modern
Tate Modern is a modern art gallery located
in London. Tate holds the national collection
of British art from 1900 to the present day
and international modern and contemporary
art. It is one of the largest museums of
modern and contemporary art in the world.
About MoMA
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is
an art museum located in New York City.
MoMA has been important in developing
and collecting modernist art, and is often
identified as the most influential museum
of modern art in the world. It is also one of
the largest.
COUNTRY ARTS SA TEACHER RESOURCE KIT – MATISSE
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Biography
Henri Matisse (1869 – 1954)
Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and
his fluid and original draughtsmanship. For the first part
of his career he was one of the most innovative painters,
regarded along with Picasso and Duchamp, as responsible
for developments in painting and sculpture in the twentieth
century.
Born in northern France in 1869, he was the oldest son of a
grain merchant and an artistically inclined mother. He studied
law and worked as a court administrator. In 1889 he was
confined to his bed for a year, recuperating from appendicitis.
Hoping to fill his empty hours, his mother gave him a paint set
and he discovered “a kind of paradise” in drawing. He soon
abandoned the law office and decided to become an artist,
deeply disappointing his strict father.
He travelled to Paris, which was rich in the arts and museums,
where he often copied the masterworks on show. By 1892 he
began an apprenticeship with the Symbolist painter Gustave
Moreau, who helped him develop his sense of colour. By 1987
he had painted his first masterpiece, called The Dinner Table
and was successfully exhibiting his paintings
In the early 1900s Matisse developed a new style using bright
masses of colour to express emotion. One critic called three
artists using this style, ‘fauves’, meaning ‘wild beasts.’ Fauvism
became the name for this style of art.
One of his most famous paintings during this time, was
called Woman with a Hat, where he used bright and unnatural
colours to paint his wife. He was criticised for using a variety
of colours, instead of being true to life in his palette.
Matisse’s work during 1917-1930 became known as his ‘Nice
period,’ as he worked in Southern France. His work still used
vibrant colour and composition, but it became more intimate,
concentrating on the female figure, interiors and still lifes.
During World War II, when modern artists under Hitler’s rule
were not allowed to exhibit their work, Picasso and Matisse
referenced each other’s work through their memories. The two
artist’s work during this time has many similarities, almost
like a visual conversation. Matisse’s 1940 painting The Dream,
COUNTRY ARTS SA TEACHER RESOURCE KIT – MATISSE
references Picasso’s 1931 painting, Woman
with Yellow Hair. The two artists developed a
close relationship and considered each other
artistic equals.
In 1941 Matisse was diagnosed with cancer
and following surgery was confined to
a wheelchair. Unable to paint, he turned
to ‘painting with scissors’. This technique
required cutting shapes out of paper
freehand, arranging and rearranging the
forms, then gluing the shapes onto paper,
canvas or board. His cut-outs are among
the most admired and influential works of
Matisse’s entire career. “Only what I created
after the illness constitutes my real self: free,
liberated,” said Matisse.
In 1947 he published Jazz, a limited-edition
book containing prints of colourful paper cut
collages and his hand written notes. He was
enchanted by the technique saying, “The walls
of my bedroom are covered with cut-outs, I
still don’t know what I’ll do with them.”
Matisse died of a heart attack at the age of
84 on 3 November 1954.
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Matisse’s style
Fauvism
Henri Matisse is widely regarded as the greatest colourist of
the twentieth century and as a rival to Pablo Picasso in the
importance of his innovations. He first achieved prominence as
the leader of the French movement Fauvism.
Fauvism meaning, ‘the wild beast’, was an artistic movement
started in the early twentieth-century. The leaders of this style
had been pupils of the artist Gustave Moreau and admired his
emphasis on personal expression. They started using intense
colour as a vehicle for describing light and space, and as a
means of communicating the artist’s emotional state.
Matisse’s painting, Woman with a Hat (1905) was at the center
of the controversy that led to the term Fauvism. Painted with
oils onto canvas, it depicts Matisse’s wife, Amelie, painted in
bold colours. It was considered offensive by critics, particularly
with Matisse’s depiction of the woman’s face represented in
multiple colours that create a mask-like appearance. In fact,
her dress, skin, feathered hat and the background are all
portrayed with un-realistic shades of vivid colours.
The painting marked a stylistic shift in Matisse’s work,
progressing from the brushwork style of separating colours
into dots or patches, into a more expressive style, with vivid
non-naturalistic colours and an “unfinished” quality. Instead
of modelling or shading to lend volume and structure to his
pictures, he used contrasting areas of pure and intense colour.
Matisse continued to use colour as the foundation for
expressive, decorative, and often monumental paintings. He
sought to create an art that would be, “a soothing, calming
influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair.” Favourite
subjects for his work included, still life and nude and references
were made to Asian and African art.
Fauvism proved an important precursor to the movements of
Cubism and Expressionism.
Woman with a Hat (1905)
Artistic qualities of Fauvism
• Colour was used to create mood
and emotion.
• Colour wasn’t true to the natural world
- A sky could be orange, a tree could be
blue, a face could be a combination of
seemingly clashing colours.
• Simplified forms.
• Mostly painted flat; no attempt at 3D
• Bold brushwork
• Sometimes a dark or black outline
around elements
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Matisse’s style
Nice period (1917-1930)
Matisse painted (from the balcony of the Hotel Mediterranee) the Bataille des Fleurs,
the traditional Carnival “parade of flowers” (1921)
Following on from Fauvism, Matisse went to live in Nice in 1917. This period of
his work has been described as him, “having no other ambition than to paint
pretty pictures for pretty women.” However, his paintings range from tiny little
townscapes, interiors, views from a window, the human form as well as his
paintings of dahlias and gladiolus.
In Nice, he loved the colour, plunging perspectives, long narrow hotel bedrooms
and the interplay of indoors and outdoors. He noticed colourful parasols,
ornamental shoes, hats laden with silk flowers and the fashions in lipstick
and eyebrow pencil. He also noticed the new brilliance of black - a colour so
negative in the north, yet so dynamic in the south.
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Matisse’s style
Cut-out (1941-1948)
Being confined to a wheelchair left Matisse
with limited physical agility, however his
creative spirit didn’t stop. Instead, he started
creating cut paper collages, called gouaches
découpés. This began new phase of his career.
Matisse said of the style, “It is no longer the
brush that slips and slides over the canvas,
it is the scissors that cut into the paper and
into the colour. The conditions of the journey
are 100 per cent different. The contour of
the figure springs from the discovery of
the scissors that give it the movement of
circulating life. This tool doesn’t modulate, it
doesn’t brush on, but it incises in, underline
this well, because the criteria of observation
will be different.”
No serious artist had ever taken collage to
this extreme of simplicity and description,
and there were some who ridiculed him for
it. Many thought they were the outpourings
of a senile old man, infantile and decorative
and not serious form of art. It took twenty
years after his death for their importance to
be noticed. Matisse made more than 200 cutouts in less than a decade.
Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence (Chapel of the Rosary) (1949-1951)
Technique
Matisse’s cut-outs were produced using gouache — a waterbased, quick-drying, matte paint. To help him, his assistants
would cut rectangular sheets of paper and apply the Gouache
which was weighted until they dried.
Matisse cut the shapes out freehand, saving the cut item as
well as the scraps of paper. His worked with various sized
scissors, and used single cuts from one sheet of paper, while
others were several pieces assembled together.
Once cut, the second part of the creative process entailed
pinning the cut pieces of paper to the walls of his studio,
arranging and rearranging until he reached the desired
balance of form and colour. It was like putting together a giant
jigsaw puzzle, moving each piece until it fit exactly. These pin
marks are still visible in his work.
Initially, Matisse had no final product in mind for these mural
decorations. “I am cutting out all these elements and putting
them up on the walls temporarily,” he said. “I don’t know yet
what I’ll come up with. Perhaps panels, wall hangings.”
So when his works were sold, the pieces needed to be glued to
paper, for framing and transportation. After 1952, a Parisian
art and restoration firm created a process to mount Matisse’s
cut-outs, allowing for the safe preservation and transport of
his work.
By the end of the 1940s, Matisse was using “cut-outs” for
various decorative arts projects, including wall hangings, scarf
patterns, tapestries, rugs, and the designs for the Dominican
chapel at Vence.
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Matisse’s style
Colour
EXPLORE
1. Talk about different colours and
what feelings/moods they create.
2. What colours can represent dark
and light?
CREATE
Matisse used many colours in his paintings and cut-outs,
however, these colours often weren’t true to the natural world.
He said, “If you want your colours to seem more intense, you
have to use more of them.”
When we look at something, our visual nerves register colour
in terms of attributes; the amount of green-or-red; the amount
of blue-or-yellow; and the brightness. In the 19th century
physiologist Ewald Hering charted how all colours arise from
a combination of green-or-red, blue-or-yellow and brightness.
The left circle shows relative mixtures of colour attributes.
The right circle shows what we perceive when these attributes
are mixed.
Matisse also loved music and dance and translated music into
a system of colours. Black = violence, red = materialism, yellow
= wickedness, white = man and woman, and blue = nature.
Work in small groups to write a chart of
colours and the feelings they create.
E.g.Red
Angry
Yellow Happy
WATCH
See Matisse create his cut-outs
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=GN0okOq8Hyc
Colours can also be used to represent certain moods or
emotions.
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Matisse’s Work
During the film you will see many of
Matisse’s works, and the intricate detail of
them, including cuts and pin-holes in his work.
Here is some more background on some of
these pieces.
“An artist must possess
Nature. He must identify
himself with her rhythm,
by efforts that will prepare
the mastery which will
later enable him to express
himself in his own language.”
Henri Matisse
The Snail (1953)
At almost three metres square, The Snail is one of Matisse’s
largest and most significant paper cut-out. Matisse was 83
years old when he created The Snail, however it typifies his
childlike approach to making an image.
Described as semi-abstract work, the piece is based on
the swirl of a snail shell, with a number of coloured shapes
arranged in a spiral pattern. Matisse first drew the snail,
then he used painted paper (Gouache), before cutting and
arranging these pieces to interpret the artwork.
EXPLORE
1. What does semi-abstract mean?
2. “The colours and shapes appear to float as though
always in motion.” In small groups discuss this
statement in relation to The Snail.
3. The Snail has been compared to the animal; how
the cut-outs occupy space and its slow, laborious
movement. Discuss this statement in relation to the
artwork.
4. What impact do the colours have that are used in The
Snail? Try making your own version of the picture using
only two colours. Discuss the variance this makes in
representation and mood.
CREATE
Make a 3D version of The Snail using boxes and coloured
paper, or make a cut-out version of another animal.
COUNTRY ARTS SA TEACHER RESOURCE KIT – MATISSE
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Matisse’s Work
The Blue Nude (Nu Bleu IV) (1952)
Oceania, the Sky and Oceania, the Sea (1946)
Matisse had often used the human form as a subject
throughout his artistic life. After his liturgical designs
for the Vence chapel, he returned to the human figure.
The Blue Nudes represent seated female nudes. To
create these pictures, he made numerous drawings in
pencil and charcoal before filling them in with cut-out
vivid blue paper – arranging them to complete the form.
This piece developed on the walls of Matisse’s
apartment in Paris. Remembering his time in Tahiti in
1930, Matisse put together a clear and vivid image
of the place he loved. He told photographer Brassai,
‘Sixteen years after my trip to Tahiti, my memories are
finally coming back to me.”
There are four pictures in all, with the first of the four
being an experiment of sorts, with two weeks work of
cutting and arranging before it satisfied him. Happy
with this form, he used the same pose for the next
three works – intertwining legs and an arm stretching
behind the neck. The colour blue signified distance and
volume to Matisse.
EXPLORE
1. What differences can you see between the first
picture and the other three pictures? Discuss
2. The colour blue signified distance and volume
to Matisse. Discuss this statement in relation
to these artworks.
CREATE
Using a plain white background and one
colour re-create one of the Blue Nudes. Discuss
your choice of colour and how it changes its
representation and mood.
COUNTRY ARTS SA TEACHER RESOURCE KIT – MATISSE
Matisse started with a swallow, which he put up on
his wall. Over the weeks that followed, other shapes
began to appear on the wall. A textile printer visited
Matisse in his apartment finding, “Two adjacent walls
were covered with white silhouettes of fish, birds,
jellyfish, coral, the life of sea and sky from a distant
Pacific world.”
Ensuring that the piece was kept in its original format,
every effort was made to reproduce the exact colour
of the wall-covering in his apartment. This ended up
being linen that was died to the exact colour, onto
which the pieces were glued.
EXPLORE
1. Look at the art-work and detail all of the
images you see and what they convey to you.
2. What do you think the appeal of this piece
is, considering that it doesn’t have the vivid
colours of Matisse’s other cut-outs?
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Matisse’s Work
The Parakeet and the Mermaid (1952)
Is one of the largest cut-outs Matisse ever
made. Being confined to a wheelchair, Matisse was
often unable to go outside, but he had always loved
the garden. The Parakeet and the Mermaid grew from
his love of the garden, “I have made a little garden all
around me where I can walk. There are leaves, fruits
and a bird.”
Look closely at the image. The parakeet is on the far
left and the Mermaid on the right side. In between
are leaves and pomegranates. This piece stretched
across two walls in his studio. The brilliant colour and
the flexibility of the paper, made it flutter and move,
like being in a garden. The white background, wasn’t
just a neutral setting, but an active part of the work,
contrasting with the coloured paper.
COUNTRY ARTS SA TEACHER RESOURCE KIT – MATISSE
EXPLORE
Discuss the contrast in the white background
and the coloured paper and how they work to
create the image.
CREATE
What outdoor space would you want to bring
inside your home? Create your own cut-out using
a white background and adding colours and
detail to represent your space.
Or, make 3D leaves by
cutting out leaf shapes
and glue onto a
balloon. Leave it to
dry completely before
popping the balloon.
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Matisse’s Work
The Swimming Pool (1952)
Matisse wanted to see divers, so his assistant, Delectorskaya
took him to a pool in Cannes. Returning home, Matisse starting
working on this piece, “I have always adored the sea, and now
that I can no longer go for a swim, I have surrounded myself
with it.”
His assistant placed a band of white paper around his dining
room, just above his head level, breaking only at the windows
and door at opposite ends of the room. On this, Matisse cut his
own divers, swimmers, and sea creatures out of paper painted
in an ultramarine blue.
The blue forms were pinned on the white paper, helping define
the aquatic ballet of bodies, splashing water, and light. The
paper’s quality was such that is reminded Matisse of the
fluidity of water.
The piece is meant to be read from right to left, beginning
and ending with a representation of a starfish. Through the
piece are contours of diving or swimming forms, which dissolve
into the water and the negative white space represents the
abstract figures. Matisse also combines contrasting viewing
angles, looking from above into the water, or sideways from
the water.
EXPLORE
1.Study The Swimming Pool. What
figures can you make out in the piece?
2. Why do you think a single white band
of paper was used as the basis to
build the blue pieces on?
3. This piece shows various contrasts;
between blue and white; perspective
of in the water, above the water;
isolation between positive and
negative; and human and animal
forms. This creates tension in the
work. Explain what is meant by
tension.
MAKE
Use Matisse’s bold use of colour and
shapes to create a cut-out of your own
using a sea motif.
After his death, the work was traced, unpinned from the walls,
and sent to a Parisian studio for mounting onto nine separate
panels, creating a work fifty-four feet in length. Apart from the
white band of paper, the walls were made of a tan burlap. To
keep the composition of his work true, the studio re-created
the tan backdrop.
COUNTRY ARTS SA TEACHER RESOURCE KIT – MATISSE
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Matisse’s Work
The Red Studio (1911)
The Fall Of Icarus (1943)
The Red Studio was painted near the end of the
Fauvism movement. During this time Matisse began
experimenting with flat areas of colour. The painting
is of Matisse’s art studio and shows some of his
recent paintings, sculptures and ceramics at the time.
Matisse was not worried about making the painting
look like a studio, but rather to create an interesting
arrangement of colours and shapes.
This piece represents The Greek myth of Icarus. His
father gave him wings of wax which melted when he
flew too close to the sun. In this picture, Icarus seems
to be falling from the dark sky with his arms flailing
awkwardly with nothing to hold onto. A red spikey
flame shape is pinned to his chest, suggesting the
panic and passion of a beating heart. Yellow spikey
stars surround him – he has been cornered by fate.
Matisse remarked, “I find that all these things... only
become what they are to me when I see them together
with the colour red.”
The artworks in the picture appear in detailed colour,
while the room’s architecture and furnishings are
indicated only by negative gaps in the red surface.
The grandfather clock is the central axis, creating a
suspension of time.
EXPLORE
1. Explain what negative gaps means in this
picture.
2. Study the picture. Discuss the use of the colour
red, the lines of walls and furniture and the
mood that the picture creates.
COUNTRY ARTS SA TEACHER RESOURCE KIT – MATISSE
EXPLORE
1. Write down your feelings as you look at the
picture and discuss why you feel this way.
2. In colour representation, if black equals
violence, then this figure is trapped within it.
Discuss.
CREATE
Make your own version of The Fall of Icarus
using coloured paper.
Or, research other Greek myths and create
your own cut-out representing one of these
characters. (e.g. Apollo, Athena, Poseidon,
Zeus or Hera)
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Visual Arts glossary
Abstract Art
Breaks away from traditional
representation of physical objects.
It explores the relationships of
forms and colours.
Avant Garde
New and experimental ideas and
methods in art, music, or literature.
Brush-stroke The paint left on a painting by a
movement of the artist’s brush
Composition
The placement or arrangement of
visual elements or ingredients in a
work of art.
Contemporary Art Is art produced at the present
period in time.
Contours
An artistic technique which
the artist sketches the contour of a
subject by drawing lines that result
in a drawing that is essentially an
outline.
Cubism
Early 20th century art style, closely
associated with Pablo Piccaso. It
used geometric, fragmented forms
to show how an object would
appear if seen from multiple angles.
Curator
The person in charge of a museum
or art collection, making detailed
decisions about selecting artists
and works for exhibiting, how they
will be displayed and the message
conveyed as a result of these
decisions.
COUNTRY ARTS SA TEACHER RESOURCE KIT – MATISSE
Element
The visual components of colour,
form, line, shape, space, texture,
and value.
Pop Art
Is an art movement that emerged
in the mid-1950s in Britain and the
late 1950s in the United States.
Fauvism
Early 20th century art style
associated with Henri Matisse. It
deals with the use of intense colour.
Saturated Colour
Refers to how vivid and intense
a colour is.
Gouache
Is a type of paint consisting
of pigment, water, and a binding
agent. Gouache is designed to
be used with opaque methods of
painting.
Shading
Is used for depicting levels of
darkness on paper by applying
media more densely or with a
darker shade for darker areas, and
less densely or with a lighter shade
for lighter areas.
Interpretation
To find meaning in a work of art.
Some works of art have multiple
meanings.
Still Life
A painting or drawing of an
arrangement of objects, typically
fruit and flowers.
Line
A mark or stroke long in proportion
to its breadth, made with a pen,
pencil, tool onto a surface.
Two-Dimensional
Having or appearing to have height
and width.
Modeling
The technique of rendering the
illusion of volume on a twodimensional surface by shading.
Modernism
An umbrella term used to describe
art produced between the 1860s
and the 1970s.
Negative Space
The space that surrounds an object
in an image. Negative space helps
to define the boundaries of
positive space and brings balance
to a composition.
Three-Dimensional
Having or appearing to have
height, width and depth.
Volume
Is the size, bulk and dimension of
a particular object. In a painting
volume is represented with light
and shade and usually in spatial
situation to make the non-flatness
clear.
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Creative activities
Activity 1
Collect some dried leaves from the garden.
1. Paint the leaves in different colours and leave to
dry. Arrange the leaves on a large piece of paper,
gluing them into place once you are happy with the
overall effect.
2. Look at the shapes and structure of the leaves
more intimately, how can you abstract the patterns
or shapes you see to create your own Matisse
inspired work?
Activity 2
Show an example of Matisse’s cut-outs, looking at
cuts such as spirals, zigzags and curves.
1. Using a variety of colour paper, cut out various
shapes in the style of Matisse. Arrange these
shapes onto a plain piece of brown or white paper
until you have created your work. Glue each piece
into place.
2. Paint your own paper, consider the colour palette,
shades and saturation of the colours and consider
how you can use these shapes to create a
composition that reflects or mimics an object, a
place or person.
Activity 3
Use the following quote from Matisse to start your
own artwork; “When I put a green, it is not grass. When
I put a blue, it is not the sky.”
2. Play some Jazz music – respond visually to the
sounds, rhythms, shapes and colours of the music.
Activity 5
Choose one of Matisse’s artworks. Write a story to
accompany the artwork.
Activity 6
Look at The Woman with the Hat by Henri Matisse.
1. Write ten or more characteristics about the artwork
or the details you see in the painting.
2. Look carefully at Man with a Pipe by Pablo Picasso.
Write ten or more characteristics about the artwork
of the details you see in the painting.
How are the two paintings similar? And how are
they different?
What is it about one of the works that appeals to
you more?
Are you familiar with any contemporary artists that
have been influenced by Matisse?
Can you see any influences in Matisse’s work and
from what periods or who has he been influenced by?
Matisse’s work came long before ‘Pop Art’. Research
Pop Art and compare this style with Matisse’s work.
Activity 7
Activity 4
Print out copies of Matisse’s 1940 painting The Dream,
with Picasso’s 1931 painting, Woman with Yellow Hair.
Matisse loved dance and music, particularly jazz
music.
1. Cut out the shapes you see in Picasso and re-arrange
them in an abstract way to create a new image.
1. Choose one of Matisse’s colourful artworks. Create
a piece of music to accompany it, reflecting on what
the piece represents and how the piece makes you
feel. Explain the reasons for your choice.
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Creative activities
Curatorial activities
Research
“There is no one way to hang artworks. You need to
work within the architecture of the building and the
various sizes of the paintings. Beyond that it is about
creating relationships.”
Task 1
Research Matisse’s Fauvism period. Look at paintings
such as; Blue Nude, The Red Studio, Open Window,
View of Collioure. Compare and contrast the works,
particularly thinking about the key ideas of Fauvism.
Task 1
Select 10 artworks, using as few or as many of them
as you like.
• Curate three different arrangements.
• What is the theme or narrative of each
arrangement? Ask yourself why you grouped
these artworks together? eg. Colour, image,
theme, subject.
Task 2
The curator at the TATE describes the importance of
Matisse’s Blue Nudes, in the exhibition he displays
them alongside some of Matisse’s sculptures.
If you were to curate that room, what other works
could you pair his nudes and what other artists could
you include in the display?
Compare and contrast
Task 1
Print out copies of Matisse’s 1940 painting The Dream
and Picasso’s 1931 painting, Woman with Yellow Hair.
Task 2
Research the work of Pablo Picasso. Why do you think
Picasso and Matisse were rivals? What similarities and
differences were there in their styles? Use samples of
each artist’s work in your argument.
Question & Answer
Why is an exhibition such as Matisse’s The Cut-Outs
important?
RESPONSE TO THE FILM
Write down your initial thoughts to the film on
the cut-out exhibition. Include your thoughts
on the work, the mood of the film and your
understanding of its importance in bringing all of
Matisse’s work together.
Discuss the ways Matisse’s work was filmed and
if there were other ways to get a complete and
intimate look at his work.
Think about the similarities and the various elements
of art; colour line, shape and symbols
Task 2
Choose two of Matisse’s artworks one from Fauvism
and one from his Nice period. Compare the two
paintings in terms of colour and the use of black.
Present your findings.
FOLLOW UP
Visit the Art Gallery of South Australia or your
local gallery. Choose one piece that you admire.
Discuss the following:
• What the picture represents to you
• What mood the piece creates
• What artistic elements have been used in the
painting?
• What style is it representative of?
• What is the importance of seeing the artwork
close up?
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References
Online
http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=148088&PICTAUS=TRUE
www.ducksters.com/biography/artists/henri_matisse.php
www.slideshare.net/djmunson/matisse-drawing-with-color-unity-and-repetition
http://www.henri-matisse.net/cut_out
www.henrimatisse.org/nu-bleu.jsp
www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/reviews/henri-matisse-the-cutouts-art-review-9259383.html
www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-1010/early-abstraction/fauvismmatisse/a/a-beginners-guide-to-fauvism
www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/new-exhibit-matisses-cut-outs-shows-artistbegan-painting-scissors/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fauvism
www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2014/matisse/about-matisse.html
www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2014/matisse/the-cut-outs.html
www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2014/matisse/img/studio/niceslider-01-01.jpgs.html
www.nytimes.com/1986/11/02/arts/art-henri-matisse-in-nice-1916-1930-anexhibition-at-the-national-gallery.html
www.theartstory.org/movement-fauvism.htm
www.theartstory.org/artist-matisse-henri.htm
www.webexhibits.org/colorart/contrast.html
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TEACHER RESOURCE KIT – FEEDBACK FORM
We value your feedback.
Your comments will inform the ongoing work of Country Arts SA’s Learning Connections.
Your name Name of school Your email address For which year level/s did you utilise the Resource Kit? Which parts of the resource did you use?
c All of it!
c Biography
c Matisse’s style
c Matisse’s Work
c Visual Arts glossary
c Creative activities
c References
Over what duration did you integrate this resource?
c 1 Session c 1 Day c 1 week c 1 Term
Other Please make any specific comments or suggestions about the resource, either positive or negative.
What benefit did the resource provide for your teaching practice?
How would you gauge the student response to the experience?
c Very Positive
c Positive c Impartial c Negative
Was the performance a useful teaching aid?
c Very useful
c Useful c Somewhat c Not at all
c Very negative
Overall, did the experience meet your teaching needs?
c Fully addressed my needs c Addressed my needs
c Somewhat addressed my needs c Did not meet my needs
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What do you regard as the most valuable learning outcome for your students when engaging with the Arts?
(e.g. being part of an enjoyable learning experience, the opportunity to see a live performance,
meet professional actors, increasing understanding of subject matter of the work)
Were there any specific comments from your students about the performance you would like to pass on?
To help us plan our future program, school timetabling varies greatly across the state.
When is the most suitable time for us to contact you regarding bookings for the following year?
c Term 4, 2016
c Term 1, 2017
c Every term
c Other Thank you for your feedback, please return this form to:
Tammy Hall
Audience Development Coordinator
Country Arts SA
2 McLaren Parade, Port Adelaide 5015
Or email [email protected]
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