MOMA - Matisse cut-outs

In November it looked as if I would never get to New York to see the Henri Matisse CutOut at MOMA.  I decided to experiment with my ipad and blogster to see if those two technologies would be useful in creating my blog.  Frankly, I found them difficult to master, so I put aside this post and started to celebrate the holidays.  But the elves decide to deliver one more gifts - a trip to NY and MOMA with Harriet.  That trip encouraged me to revisit my original post to see what could be saved using my laptop and blogger.  What follows is the hybred.

According to MOMA, in the late 1940s Henri Matisse turned almost exclusively to cut paper as his primary medium, and scissors as his chief implement, introducing a radically new operation that came to be called a cut-out. Matisse would cut painted sheets into forms of varying shapes and sizes—from the vegetal to the abstract—which he then arranged into lively compositions, striking for their play with color and contrast, their exploitation of decorative strategies, and their economy of means. Initially, these compositions were of modest size but, over time, their scale grew along with Matisse’s ambitions for them, expanding into mural or room-size works. A brilliant final chapter in Matisse’s long career, the cut-outs reflect both a renewed commitment to form and color and an inventiveness directed to the status of the work of art, whether as a unique object, environment, ornament, or a hybrid of all of these.

Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs is a groundbreaking reassessment of this important body of work. The largest and most extensive presentation of the cut-outs ever mounted, the exhibition includes approximately 100 cut-outs—borrowed from public and private collections around the globe—along with a selection of related drawings, prints, illustrated books, stained glass, and textiles. The last time New York audiences were treated to an in-depth look at the cut-outs was in 1961.

This exhibition was sparked by an initiative to conserve The Museum of Modern Art’s monumental cut-out The Swimming Pool(1952), a favorite of visitors since its acquisition by MoMA in 1975. The Swimming Pool is the only cut-out composed for a specific room—the artist’s dining room in his apartment in Nice, France. The goals of the multiyear conservation effort have been to bring this magical environment back to its original color balance, height, and spatial configuration. Newly conserved, The Swimming Pool—off view for more than 20 years—returns to MoMA’s galleries as a centerpiece of the exhibition.

With research on two fronts—conservation and curatorial—this exhibition offers a reconsideration of the cut-outs by exploring a host of technical and conceptual issues: the artist’s methods and materials and the role and function of the works in his practice; their environmental aspects; their sculptural and temporal presence as their painted surfaces exhibited texture and materiality, curled off the walls, and shifted in position over time; and their double lives, first as contingent and mutable in the studio and, ultimately, as permanent, a transformation accomplished via mounting and framing. The exhibition also mines the tensions that lurk in all the cut-outs, between finish and process, fine art and decoration, drawing and color. (Taken from the MOMA website, for more information on visiting the exhibition Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs

 This exhibition was just marvelous.  It rivaled the Sargent show at the MFA.  What follows are some of my favorites.

It is difficult to select favorites - so I am concentrating on new favorites that is to say pieces I was less familiar with.  The range of joyable dancers are simply wonderful.  

One of the real treats was seeing the new restored Swimming Pool.  Many people asked how we felt about the attending such a popular this exhibition - didn't the crowds annoy?  MOMA did a great job managing the crowds and most of the time, all visitors were polite and we shared the space happily.  By the time we go to the gallery displaying the Swimming Pool, we shared the space with one other person.  

Once thing about ignorance is the pleasure you feel when it falls away.  I didn't know or forgot that Matisse did stained glass.  This section of the exhibition was another glorious experience.  As is always the cases pictures can do nothing more than hint, but it does help me remember the experience.

With art like this is a chapel, the visitor know they are in an extraordinary special space.

A trip to an exhibition always ends with a trip to gift shop for postcards and other fun items.  There were two children books on display which made me first think of Ben.  But when I got home, I decided I also needed these books.  So the first title in my new collection of picture books on artist is Matisse's Garden.