Calling north for an inspirational study day

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• It was a bone penetrating wind that whistled through the streets of Liverpool that January day, but inside the Walker Art Gallery the influence of a searing Mediterranean sun was evident in the hot colours of The Art Books of Henri Matisse. This tastefully curated exhibition focuses on “Jazz”, which is probably Matisse’s most famous book. It features reproductions of his original collages accompanied by lithography prints of the artist’s own handwritten text – his philosophies about art and other introspective musings. The raw primary colour, like the sun of the south of France, penetrates the viewer’s soul, is completely irrepressible, impossible to hide from and totally enervating. By contrast the grey text, which flows in an arabesque style, bares little or no topical reference to the images, being conceived by Matisse purely for its visual effect, as a joining device within the overall composition.
  Published in Paris by Efstratios Tériade in 1947, the example on show is number 181 of 250 copies which were centre folded. The same images and text were reproduced in a portfolio version of 100 copies without the centre fold. However, because Matisse was insistent that the published images should reproduce the same vibrant colours of the original collages, which he had painted with Linel gouache, and after several unsuccessful attempts to reproduce them using conventional printing processes and inks, all 350 copies had to be individual made using pochoir. This is an extremely sophisticated and elaborate hand-stenciling process which had previously been employed by Mary Cassatt, Man Ray, and Sonia Delauney. As a consequence, a minimum of five and sometimes thirty separate stencil were employed to create the complex angular and curvaceous shapes. Finally, by directly brushing the same Linel gouaches through hand cut metal stencils it was possible to give the “Jazz” images the same directness and rich colour of the original collages. In places it is possible to see the printer’s brush marks in the gouache surface, and If you look very closely, even the hairline separations between the individual stencils!
  So, apart from Matisse’s energy sapping colour and the incomprehensibly complicated pochoir what’s so memorable and inspiring about this exhibition? Well, perhaps not much – that is – apart from the acknowledgement and celebration of the unique place “Jazz”, and more significantly, Matisse’s coloured paper collages, occupy in the history of modern art and their influence on contemporary graphics. He did it first – the genre belongs to him. So I guess that’s enough!
  And as for inspiration, look no further than Matisse’s florid text on pages 89 – 93 where he offers this advice to artists: “A NEW PAINTING should be a unique thing, a birth bringing a new face into the representation of the world through the human spirit. The artist should call forth all of his energy, his sincerity and the greatest possible modesty in order to push aside during his work the old cliches that come so readily to his hand and can suffocate the small flower that itself never turns out as one expected.”
  I know that feeling!

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