The exhibition of the year, if not indeed, so far, the century, enjoys its final extended days at MoMA where it closes February 10. “Extended” is indeed the operative word this weekend, when the exhibition is open twenty-four hours. Matisse’s resplendent late foray into cut-out, a technique of his own invention, is the subject of this fulsome and stunning display. It opens with the pre-history of the medium in the master of color’s studies and maquette for the Barnes mural and goes on to chart its development, through his Jazz portfolio, his ecclesiastical commissions and his Swimming Pool, to the monumental musings upon pure disembodied color of his last works, executed by direction from his deathbed at gravity and mortality defying scale.
Ever the inventor, his 1952 frieze of divers, The Swimming Pool, pinned around the burlap-lined walls of his dining room at the Hotel Regina, was, as the exhibition’s curators put it, “Matisse’s first and only self-contained, site-specific cut-out.” It is also, as they say, an “aquatic ballet of bodies, splashing water, and light.” DAVID COHEN
Henri Matisse, The Swimming Pool,1952. Gouache on paper, cut and pasted, on painted paper. Photograph shows one section of installation of nine panels in two parts on burlap-covered walls, as seen in present exhibition. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Mrs Bernard F. Gimbel Fund, 1975.