Things You Didn’t Know About Henri Matisse’s Cut-Outs

The Process

One might wonder what it was like behind the scenes of creating Henri Matisse‘s iconic cut-outs. Even with his illness, Matisse  did not let it overcome his passion for the newfound medium. His studio assistants prepared the papers by painting them with gouache colors of the artist’s choice. Once the papers were dry, he would choose a sheet of painted paper and then start cutting out forms without direct reference to a model, unlike his paintings. The absence of a model, and the technical skills he honed over the years, gave Matisse the freedom to achieve his most transparent visual expression of a sense of the universal that he yearned for.

John Hallmark Neff stated in his essay about Matisse’s making of cut-outs: “Each cut-out is a gesture, a continuous contour whose ‘rightness’ depends on his ability to sustain the rhythm of his act, the flow of scissors through painted paper, a momentum which ensured the integrity and wholeness of each shape.” The result of the physical act of cutting the forms in a controlled manner would then be transferred to a flat surface, often a board or the wall in his studios. His assistants would pin the cut-outs to the wall based on the instructions from the artist when it was over the limits of his mostly sedentary life. The final fate of the cut-outs was on another flat surface on which they were glued after they had been traced to ensure the exact position.

The medium seems accessible and even simpler than oil paintings or marble sculptures at first, but the scale the artist worked with and the delicate space they occupied made it difficult to transport and preserve the work in the long term. Without the help of his devoted assistants, it would have been impossible to create the larger-than-life, wall-to-wall cut-outs we now admire.

Between Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture

Matisse pursued drawing, painting, and sculpting even though he saw sculpting merely as a means to better understand the subject in his drawings and paintings. His fluency in these methods of art-making points to his success in the cut-outs. All the aspects of the three art forms exist in harmony in his cut-outs.

The shadows of the cut-outs and the three-dimensional space they occupy on the wall would be considered sculptural. The colored surface points to a painterly characteristic. The lines directly made by scissors replace the drawing aspect. Matisse called it “drawing with scissors” and said “cutting directly into vivid color reminds him of the direct carving of sculptors.” This liminal space between drawing, painting, and sculpting that the artist created constitutes a tension that challenges the viewer’s perception of his cut-outs and opens up the space for imagination. Unfortunately, most of Matisse’s cut-outs lost their semi-sculptural element when they were later pasted on paper or canvas.

Bringing a Garden into the Studio

Matisse’s long-time obsession with his garden in his art practice is crucial towards understanding the forms and colors of the cut-outs. Matisse had such admiration for nature, especially its incomparable colors. That led him to incorporate its elements into his works.

Evidently, his studio started turning into a cut-out garden during this period of his life. The Parakeet and the Mermaid is the epitome of realizing a garden indoors. Colorful cut-outs were pinned not so forcefully onto the wall and had a life of their own as if they were a branch moved by a breeze or bustled by the movement of creatures in the wild. One can notice that Matisse took “the very features of a garden: in its organization, at once organic and controlled; in its unceasing flux and metamorphosis; in its mix and melding of color and texture; and in its environmental aspect, a three-dimensional space … where one can ‘can walk’”¹ that people could walk into. Matisse brought in, incorporated, nature itself.

In his book, A Painter’s Notes (Notes d’un peintre) published in 1903, Matisse wrote: “What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter, an art which could be for every mental worker…for example, a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.” This quote indicates that his years of making a “garden” in his studio using cut-outs were a way of actualizing his ultimate goal – decoration, “an environmental art capable of evoking the calm, untroubled ambiance he had always sought to create.”²

Decoration Beyond Decoration

In his final years, Matisse used cut-outs to visualize his other forms of art: painting, stained glass, ceramic murals, prints, etc. The studies for the Vence Chapel’s windows and murals, a Lasker mausoleum window, and a dining room in a villa are examples of the artist’s application of the cut-outs in different mediums and in different environments. Their functions were the same – “to vitalize the space where everyday life is conducted.”³ As he was moving towards this world of decorative art, he wanted to separate his cut-out designs and final products. The products were only to be used for their ornamental function and the designs were to be displayed at art institutions.

Henri Matisse’s decorative art was not welcomed in the art world when it was exhibited for the first time, but he kept pursuing his cut-outs until the end. Now its importance in art history is apparent. Rémi Labrusse wrote in the essay Decoration Beyond Decoration: “Forceful in their fragility, brilliant in their humility, the cut-outs emerge as the unexpected embodiment of what had always seemed impossible to the Western world: the eternal presence of the image unties with the fleeting grace of the ornament.”