Matisse at MoMA

In MoMA’s introduction to their exhibit, it describes Matisse as“drawing with scissors”, and of “cutting directly into vivid color”. Matisse found a way to resolve what he referred to as "the eternal conflict of drawing and color." The cut outs were his way to draw and color at the same time, which neither drawing nor painting alone can accomplish. 

In his book Jazz, Matisse said that to cut right into color makes me think of a sculptor carving into stone.

MoMA’s show leads us through a progression of stages Matisse went through with his early exploration of working with paper as a direct medium.

In Matisse’s early attempts he started the process by drawing the form of his dancers. The figures are ink drawn, but their “frame” was Matisse’s early bold experiment in cut paper

In this figure of a moving dancer, various layers of cut paper seem to reinforce this flight, whereas the black figure’s body cut from one piece has a steading effect. The black figure denotes stillness and is in contrast to the leaping figure.

The study in black and white for the Barnes mural predates the previous two examples. Because of the large scale of the mural, the outline of the shapes were drawn on the paper. The shapes would then be cut and pinned to a giant canvas by an assistant and tweaked by re-cutting rather than having to re-paint.

Here is a link to an article on the relationship between Barnes, the benefactor who commissioned the mural and Matisse. It is an insight into Matisse's creative process.

These cut outs below were used as a preliminary sketch that would later be used as the basis to execute the murals on site in gauche. In this early study of cut-outs he freely draw onto the paper to augment the shapes: