Customer Reviews

Matisse Paper Cut Outs

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From a scholarly point of view, this is the most important book ever written about Matisse's final and unique art form. A series of remarkable essays explore Matisse's career, his development as an artist, the circumstances which led to his creation of this unique medium, and the evolution of the cut-outs from small, aquatic works to monumental art. An essay on the book Jazz is particularly relevant. A technical appendix outlining conservation strategies for two large works provides insights into the material nature of these very fragile pieces. All in all, a remarkable scholarly achievement.

That said, the major flaw of this book is the paucity of color plates. I realize that color printing is expensive, but 25 plates out of a total of over 400 duotone illustrations is a little miserly and fails to do justice to the works of art. At the very least, every cut-out shown in this exhibition should have been illustrated in color. I am at a loss to understand why this major oversight occurred, since John Elderfield published a fine book on the same subject in 1978 with excellent, full-color, reproductions. Since a large scale exhibition of these delicate (and expensive - Composition With Red Cross (1947) recently brought over $10,000,000 at auction) works is unlikely to occur again, it seems to me that it would be worthwhile to reprint this book in color. Imagine an art book celebrating the greatest colorist of the 20th century illustrated only in black-and-white! The authors did an injustice to Matisse by forgetting this simple fact. Otherwise, an essential addition to your Matisse library.