Matisse’s Cutting Edge

AN INTERACTIVE LIST OF THE 2014 NEW ESTABLISHMENT

For me, the rapturous impact of MoMA’s Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs, which opens October 12 and closes February 8, is surpassed only by a 1951 visit I paid to the artist when he was actually doing them. I was a 26-year-old art critic. A friend who was a collector had got me in. Matisse was 82 and would die three years later. For most of the last 10 years, he had seldom left his bed, the consequence of a series of nearly fatal intestinal problems.

Matisse received us regally in his bed, which could be wheeled around his three lofty studios, whose walls were covered floor to ceiling with the cutouts that constitute this amazing exhibition. They had been inspired by a commission to design the windows, walls, and chasubles for a nearby chapel. Later, the cutout technique would become an end in itself, as significant in the last years of his career as Fauvism had been in his earlier years.

Matisse’s rooms were in the Hotel Excelsior Regina Palace, at Cimiez, located on a hill above Nice and built to house the ailing Queen Victoria, who needed to quit cold, wet England for a sunny climate. Her staff of a hundred took up the entire west wing. Ever since, the British monarch has been revered for putting the French Riviera on the map.

The bedridden Matisse’s secret weapon was a bamboo cane 12 feet long. With this strapped to his hand, he was able to direct his numerous assistants—not least his Russian mistress, Lydia Delektorskaya—to make infinite adjustments to the colored-paper compositions high on his walls, much as a conductor would lead an orchestra with his baton.

Picasso was a frequent visitor. According to his mistress Françoise Gilot, their three-year-old son, Claude, was the only child allowed to romp on Matisse’s bed. When his father asked why he loved Matisse so much, Claude said, “Because he’s a real painter. Going to see him is like being in one of his paintings. Whereas with you, Papa, you steal my toys and make apes out of them. [Picasso had indeed pinched the boy’s toy car and used it for the head of his famous baboon sculpture.] You are not serious!”