On Matisse, Summing and Summoning It All Up

She flies through the air, this firebird made of gouache-covered yellow and white pieces of paper, into the waiting, outstretched arms of her partner, solid black with dancer’s thighs, both against an ultramarine background. The pieces of paper are pasted and mounted on board, but you can see pinholes, inconsistencies in color and brushstrokes, even barer spots that paint has not covered. The work is full of energy, bursting with movement, our introduction to a magical, joyous journey through Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs, now extended through Feb. 10 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

“Two Dancers” was made in in 1937-38 as a design for a curtain for the ballet Rouge et Noir. Soon Matisse would suffer the end of his marriage, the beginning of World War II and a debilitating operation for stomach cancer. As he recovered he began to make most of his art with scissors — he never painted again after 1948 — and paper. Assistants covered paper with gouache in brilliant shades of red, yellow, orange, purple and violet, blues, greens, even tans; then Matisse cut the paper from his wheelchair or, later, his famous bed on wheels and directed the placement of each piece into meticulous arrangements of spatial architecture. The works are so easy to love in their simplicity that it is easy to forget how impeccably controlled they are.

Matisse had hoped to make books of his work. But after “Jazz” was published in 1947 he was so disappointed in the flat reproduction that he decided to make cut-outs as permanent pieces rather than maquettes, models of planned pieces. Just compare “The Fall of Icarus,” the cutout with its brilliant stab of heart-broken red, its downward pull and yellow starbursts, against the printed version to understand the difference.

Much has been written about the late work of artists, writers and composers as a summing up, a confluence of everything done before. But Matisse invented something new as his valedictory, an erasing of the conflict between line and color, between painting and sculpture. His shapes dance rhythmically against white backgrounds, they multiply by placement and association into other associations: jagged bursts can be stars or sea creatures, arms become lotus leaves, even the steam from a coffee pot curls into a magnificent blossom.

Matisse’s method seems simple and irreducible, as if we could all make them; and this open-hearted simplicity is part of the works’ charm. Yet examine closely the complexity of each piece, the absolute rightness of placement and juxtaposition of forms and colors, surprises and overwhelms us with joy. These works are ripe as fruit, as carefully thought out as the North African rugs and textiles Matisse loved. This is the thinking of a lifetime pared down to essentials. Nothing is excessive, nothing is unnecessary.

The Cut-Outs is one of those magnificent art exhibitions that come along too infrequently. It is nearly overwhelming and shattering in its brilliance of color and imagination.      

Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs runs at MOMA through Feb. 10. To see “The Fall of Icarus,”go to www.tricornernews.com.