Matisse is one of my greatest art heroes. The huge
retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in the winter of 1992-3 coincided
with my final year in grad school at Pratt, and came little more than a year
after I moved to New York City. That exhibition has been a touchstone for me
ever since. I somehow managed to visit that epic show three separate times, and
the catalog is almost always lying open in my studio somewhere. Today, more
than twenty years after that knockout exhibition, when my responsibilities and
obligations are so much more complicated, I see a fraction of the shows and art
that I did back then. I missed the big de Kooning show a couple years ago, and
I still regret it. I could not afford to miss Matisse, because the fragile
nature of the cut-outs prohibits a repeat of a show like this any time soon, if
ever.
I admire Matisse so much because of certain qualities that are
always present to me when I’m looking at his work, whether it’s a painting or
cut-out, or print, drawing, or sculpture. There is always generosity,
intelligence, struggle, variety. The lush generosity in Matisse is part of an
absolutely fierce visual intelligence that stretches the work to a profound
tautness. That famous push and pull. There are no lazy corners in Matisse
paintings. There may be weird corners, but they work. Also, of course, and
belying that famous “armchair” quotation, there is always a hard-fought aspect
to a Matisse work, the intuited sense that what you are looking at was arrived
at only after a long and arduous, uphill climb. There is also the tireless
variety of his approaches, techniques, forms, and abutments, and a restless and
wild energy that often seems to be barely contained. No matter the size, a Matisse occupies its
space with such authority that it seems bigger than it is.
So, the
cut-outs at the Modern? A splendid show, staggering in its variety, its
quantity, its invention, and of course its beauty. Go see it. It doesn't get any better. A few thoughts:
·
The move
from the early, smaller work, to the later, humongous work. The early work
is small, concentrated, compact, saturated, and full of incident. The later
work is huge, expansive, majestic, oftentimes
daring in its simplicity and reduction. Whereas in the early work the colors
butt right up against each other, creating tighter compositions and electric
contrasts at the edges of forms, as the pieces get bigger, the white ground
becomes more prominent, and reminds me of the white grounds in the early
pointillist and fauve paintings from fifty years before. The white ground gives
the brilliant color more room to breathe, and even expand. I actually wish this
show could have used more galleries, not because the biggest pieces need more
room (they don’t), but because the smaller pieces do. I’d love to see the
pieces from Jazz spread out so they can breathe, and not jammed so close
together, but parceled out across three rooms or so. (Surely they could have found another place
to put the so-so contemporary painting survey; they don’t stand a chance on the
same floor as the cut-outs.) One of my favorite pieces in the show is a small
piece from a private NY collection, called Black Boxer, not more than twelve inches
tall, mounted in a big, dark, wooden frame, and consisting of only green,
black, and red. It is a piece that is bigger than it is.
·
Sometimes
a single piece reads more as a sequence of images, rather than as a single,
coherent image. There’s the Thousand and One Nights piece, for example, but
even more striking was a long piece called Composition (the Velvets) that they
hung high on the opposite wall, which almost seems like it could be a zoetrope
image.
·
The
stained glass in person. Damn. And the giant maquettes for the chapel at Vence. Oh Holy of Holies.
·
The
Swimming Pool. Wow. It may be that it took me completely by surprise
because I haven’t seen it in twenty years. It was on continual display when I
came to New York in 1991 (and when I made my first visit the year before), but
after the 1992-3 retrospective it was kept in storage because of its fragility.
Or it may be the painstaking and beautiful restoration which included replacing
the acidic, brittle, and darkened burlap with fresher material (still burlap,
though). Or it may be that the installation is better now that the Swimming
Pool has a room to itself with only one doorway, making it more like the room
in which is was originally installed. Probably it’s all of those reasons, as
I’m sure you’ve guessed I’d say. At any rate, I was not prepared for the
reaction I had to seeing this piece again. I had not remembered it being so
goddamned beautiful. And lively. Delightful, and rich and complicated despite
its using only three colors (counting the burlap).
One of the best things I’ve read about the show, comes from Phillip Taaffe, writing
about the cut-outs when they were at the Tate in London. Altoon Sultan has also written a really fine piece on the show, here at Studio and Garden, her excellent blog. She is a writer and artist of discerning clarity, and always a pleasure to read.
The cut-outs were born of necessity, as he struggled with
illness, and they were put to different purposes, from graphics and book design
to textiles to painting to murals and stained glass. The
variety of purpose and approach, invention and solution, is awe-inspiring,
the product of a wildly restless and intense intelligence. The cut-outs are
some badass shit. I’d love to see the show again, but I doubt I’ll be able to
make the time. However, my heart and brain are still buzzing from this show, and
I do not doubt that it will stay with me for a long time.
PS: Maybe hope is not lost for seeing it again – the Modern
has extended the show through 2/20/15. Go see it.
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