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拍品專文
Henri Matisse created Jazz towards the end of his life, when he was largely bed-bound - yet it is a glorious celebration of life, a riot of pure colors and playful forms. The twenty pochoirs marked a radical new departure in Matisse's work. The maquettes for Jazz are amongst the first essays in a medium entirely of his own devising - the papiers découpés - which led him to abandon painting altogether in favor of this new and inventive method of image-making. For Matisse, the technique of cutting shapes or 'signs' from brightly colored sheets of paper finally closed the gap between line, form and color - a divide he, as both a great colorist and passionate draughtsman, had always felt. The cut-outs at last linked 'drawing and color in a single movement' i
Matisse had used a paper cut-out design in an early issue of the art periodical VERVE, but when the publisher Stratis Eleftheriades (better known as Tériade) first put forward the idea of an entire book using paper cut-out designs, Matisse initially refused. After some persuasion and further development of the technique, the artist relented and devoted himself wholeheartedly to the project, working on it over several months of intense and feverish creative activity between 1943-4. Inspired by the circus, folk tales and exotic voyages, Matisse thought of his cut-outs as ‘crystallizations of memories’. Originally titled Cirque, the improvised themes and compositional variations prompted Tériade to suggest Jazz as an alternative title. When the book was published in 1947 it was met with unprecedented success: ‘Of all Matisse's books, Jazz is undoubtedly the most important: it provokes a real revolution in the work of the artist and in the history of contemporary art.’ ii
Matisse insisted on printing Jazz using the same Linel brand gouache paints he had used to color his paper cut-out maquettes. It is these intensely glowing colors, beautifully preserved in the present example, and the poetic and evocative, yet nearly abstract imagery which make Jazz one of the greatest and most influential print series of the 20th century.
i (Matisse quoted in an interview with André Lejard, Amis de l'Art, no. 2, October 1951).
ii (Michel Anthonioz, Hommage Tériade, Paris, 1973, p. 125).
Matisse had used a paper cut-out design in an early issue of the art periodical VERVE, but when the publisher Stratis Eleftheriades (better known as Tériade) first put forward the idea of an entire book using paper cut-out designs, Matisse initially refused. After some persuasion and further development of the technique, the artist relented and devoted himself wholeheartedly to the project, working on it over several months of intense and feverish creative activity between 1943-4. Inspired by the circus, folk tales and exotic voyages, Matisse thought of his cut-outs as ‘crystallizations of memories’. Originally titled Cirque, the improvised themes and compositional variations prompted Tériade to suggest Jazz as an alternative title. When the book was published in 1947 it was met with unprecedented success: ‘Of all Matisse's books, Jazz is undoubtedly the most important: it provokes a real revolution in the work of the artist and in the history of contemporary art.’ ii
Matisse insisted on printing Jazz using the same Linel brand gouache paints he had used to color his paper cut-out maquettes. It is these intensely glowing colors, beautifully preserved in the present example, and the poetic and evocative, yet nearly abstract imagery which make Jazz one of the greatest and most influential print series of the 20th century.
i (Matisse quoted in an interview with André Lejard, Amis de l'Art, no. 2, October 1951).
ii (Michel Anthonioz, Hommage Tériade, Paris, 1973, p. 125).