One of my all time favorite art pieces is the cut out “Icarus” by Matisse. Brilliant in its simplicity. The black figure of Icarus could be any of us, and is he falling or floating? The blue looks more like water than sky to me. The piece bridges life and death, and like most of Matisse’s cut-outs makes more sense after reading the title. Framed by stars (or are they explosions, the piece could be a commentary on World War 2), it’s the standout from his ground-breaking book Jazz. And what makes an art piece like this so powerful is the deep message hiding behind a rather simple abstract image. The simplicity is also what makes this a great art lesson as it can easily be taught online or in the classroom.
Matisse was an artist I learned to love later in life, it seemed to go hand in hand with when I started painting street art. I think the brightly colored spray paint had so many connections with his bold use of color. Now his work is something that stops me in my path when I stroll museums. There is area in the MOMA with many of his works, most notably “The Piano Lesson”, another brilliant piece. I’ve included a picture of me there in front of a different painting.
There is a great video or two by the BBC on Matisse starring art critic Alastair Sooke (I’m a huge fan and think his videos are a great resource for children ages 13 and up). I show my students a brilliant section on Matisse’s book Jazz that’s a segment from Sooke’s program “Matisse: A Cut Above the Rest” (minutes 5:24-9:00).
Here’s how I use Matisse’s cut-outs as a framework for making abstract art. We look at his art piece “The Snail” and discuss how it does and doesn’t look like an actual snail. I have the student watch the video previously mentioned and then complete an investigation on Matisse using their computers to research the answers. We then start transforming the animals from the Chinese zodiac into Matisse inspired abstractions. Students search realistic photos of the animals and use those as a basis to make shapes that could be the animal. I originally taught this project in Shanghai so the Chinese zodiac made sense as a reference, but you could do anything. I would stick to animals, and doing many of them, because it’s in the repetition where one starts to get better with abstraction. You can (and should) make these out of paper cut outs, as it will make the work even more abstract. But since I did this teaching online, we used whatever was available. This was taught to 7th and 8th graders, but like many art projects, could be adapted to suit other ages. I recommend doing a basic color lesson beforehand.
Draw, Paint, Think 