Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs

Jacky Klein presents a sneak peek at Tate Modern's dazzling new exhibition, which brings together Matisse's late-period abstract collages. Get 50% off entry with the National Art Pass: http://www.artfund.org/get-involved/b... Film by Northern Town: http://www.northerntown.co.uk/

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welcome to London's Tate Modern for the
must-see show of the summer
it's a blockbuster bringing together
works by one of the world's most loved
artists on room at ease
in the 1940s he invented a completely
new art form the popular day to pay or
cut out
you see him cutting into the paper with
incredible confidence and then putting
amount of the paper and making these
compositions that are really unlike
anything that we've seen in modern art
at any point in the trailer century
the cutout have the scale of grand
paintings
the three-dimensional presence of
sculpture the linear equality of drawing
they were all these art forms rolled
into one but they were also something
altogether new and in case you're not
sure where to begin
here are the five essential things you
need to know about my teeth is colorful
creations
Matty's called his technique painting
with scissors
it was a sort of artistic back to basics
cutting up and collaging things that
children do when they play but his love
of cutting also went back to his own
roots
matisse came from a long line of weavers
so when he cut up paper often using
scissors identical to the ones used by
Taylor's he was reconnecting with his
past
when my teeth first started cutting out
paper
he uses techniques as a simple means to
an end to help him map out and plan
large-scale projects at first he was
tentative even secretive about his new
method of working but before long he
realized the incredible potential of the
cutouts
soon he was using them for more
ambitious projects working in such a
creative frenzy that he made more than
200 cutouts in less than a decade
these are great artwork magnificent
confident perfectly resolved but when
you get up close you suddenly see that
they're riddled with tiny pin holes
these holes provide a vital clue to
their making
because while we now see these pieces of
colored paper blew down and placed under
glass
they weren't originally conceived like
this at all one of my teeth had cut his
paper into various shapes and sizes
he got his studio assistance to arrange
them in different compositions and tap
them to the wall using small pins
then he'd recapped and we combine them
until he felt he got just the right
balance
it was a bit like working out the pieces
of a giant jigsaw puzzle
yeah
by the early nineteen fifties Matisse
was working on an ever larger scale with
cutouts that took over whole walls even
whole rooms
his greatest project by far was the work
he made four the Dominican chapel of the
Rosary involves near his home here was a
complete architectural environment
stained glass windows
ceramic tiles even robes for the priest
it's amazing to think the Matisse his
career had started in the eighteen
nineties under the influence of the
Impressionist yet here he is at the very
end of his life wanting to find Beatles
the immersive installation art of the
future
yeah
you'd never know it given their vitality
but Matisse's cutouts were made an old
age from his late sixties until his
death at the age of 84 and they were
made under the shadow of illness and
exhaust stream
after a botched operation following a
diagnosis of cancer and with failing
eyesight
matisse made much of the world we see
here
his wheelchair from his bed but the
cutouts inspired him so much that he
told friends this period was his second
life if he couldn't get out into the
world anymore
he'd recreate that world in art in all
its color and beauty and now all that
color beauty and vitality is here at the
Tate do come and see it in cash
yeah