Matisse Series 2 – Icarus

Icare, 1947
Jazz, 1947
Planche gravée en couleur exécutée au pochoir
42,5 x 65,5 cm
Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France



Icarus from Jazz
by the artist. 1943-1947. page: 16 1/2 x 12 11/16" (42 x 32.2 cm). Publisher: Tériade Éditeur, Paris. Printer: Edmond Vairel, Paris. Edition: 250. The Louis E. Stern Collection. © 2009 Succession H. Matisse, Paris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
(http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=28467)


Icarus & Jazz

"Cutting into color reminds me of the sculptor's direct carving."--Henri Matisse

爵士 (Jazz) 系列的剪紙畫作是馬諦斯晚年的藝術成就，何以命名為 Jazz？參考以下馬諦斯本人的現身說法

Jazz: the title was well chosen. In a letter to Brother Rayssiguier, Matisse crisply defined it: "the talent for improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience" (Schneider 666).
http://www.uwstout.edu/faculty/schulerr/matisse.shtml

Jazz 的創作過程：Matisse在失眠的夜裡以創作自我救贖
It was the insomnia which greatly informed the look of Jazz. The daylight color range of his painting gave way to the artificial light and synthetic color of the cutouts. Nocturnal creative activity became his salvation from the anxiety of poor sleep. It is not surprising that several of the images in Jazz are nighttime scenes, figures enveloped in remote darkness, like the deep blue night sky. In fact, only the Lagoon images can assuredly be viewed as daylight scenes.
(資料來源：http://www.gregkucera.com/matisse.htm)

Jazz 系列的創作主題：
the world of the French music hall and circus, mythology and legends, symbolism for the War between France and Germany, and memories from his life and travels.
(資料來源：http://www.gregkucera.com/matisse.htm)


伊卡魯斯：在藍色的黑夜裡，周圍有多個黃色的爆點，無處閃躲而不斷舞動著黑色的身影，在此危亡之際，鮮紅的心依舊明亮地跳動著….

The depiction of Icarus falling through a field of deep blue with yellow starbursts all around him can also be read as a visual metaphor for the resistance fighters' courageous attempts to navigate the skies between the Nazi artillery shelling.
(資料來源：http://www.gregkucera.com/matisse.htm)


1947年由德西雅德在巴黎出版的爵士全書共計152頁，內容包含馬諦斯的親筆手稿及20幅插畫。本書一共發行250本，另外有20本非賣品，以及100頁僅製作成底片的原稿。  (p.120 馬諦斯 貓頭鷹出版 2001年)

THE CREATION OF JAZZ
Jazz was published by Efstratios Tériade with whom Matisse had previously collaborated on several other printed projects involving art and text. Tériade's artful magazine Verve had already featured, as cover illustrations, examples of Matisse's cutout work. No serious artist had ever taken collage to this extreme of simplicity and description, and there were those who ridiculed him for it. Nonetheless, Jazz was a natural outgrowth of the increasing limitations of Matisse's physical agility and the abundance of his creative spirit at this time.
For almost a decade Matisse had been making the cut-paper collages as complete works of art. Several elements in Jazz can be traced back to specific early abstractions with flat areas of color painted between 1911 and 1917. It is also known that in his early work Matisse had used cut-paper pieces to approximate shape and color in his painted compositions. As his health failed and his dexterity decreased Matisse worked more and more with cut-paper, which became an increasingly direct method of imagemaking. He produced very few paintings during this period and until his death from a heart attack in 1954. In fact he produced his last sculpture in 1950 and his last painting in 1951.
(資料來源：http://www.gregkucera.com/matisse.htm)






"The paper cutouts allow me to draw with color. For me, it is a simplification. Instead of drawing an outline and then filling in with color-with one modifying the other-I draw directly in color...It is not a starting point, it is a completion." -- Henri Matisse

其他網路參考資料
http://www.henri-matisse.net/cut_outs.html


Who is Icarus ??

伊卡魯斯 ( Icarus ) 是希臘神話裡的一個故事...一個悲劇性的人物，但是他僅僅被塑造成一個粗心不聽話的犧牲者，卻欠缺神話中應有的特殊事蹟或豐功偉業

Icarus 的父親 Daedalus 是位多才多藝的工匠
Daedalus 為 Minos 國王建造了一個迷宮.
最終他跟兒子 Icarus 卻一起被國王關到迷宮裡
雖然他自己是建造者,
可是也不知道怎樣走出來.
於是他為自己給兒子各做了一對翅膀.

他給 Icarus 戴上翅膀時
叮囑他不要飛得太高,以免太陽把翅膀上的蠟給熔化了
可是 Icarus 過於興奮而忘了 Daedalus 所說的話越飛越高...
最後太陽將黏著翅膀的蠟熔化了
Icarus 就這樣墜入海中淹死了.
Daedalus 找到他的屍體後，把他埋在一個叫做 Icaria 的小島上.

Icarus' father, Daedalus, a talented and remarkable Athenian craftsman, attempted to escape from his exile in the place of Crete, where he and his son were imprisoned at the hands of King Minos, the king for whom he had built the Labyrinth to imprison the Minotaur (half man, half bull). Daedalus, the superior craftsman, was exiled because he gave Minos' daughter, Ariadne, a clew of string in order to help Theseus, the enemy of Minos, survive the Labyrinth and defeat the Minotaur.
Daedalus fashioned two pairs of wings out of wax and feathers for himself and his son. Before they took off from the island, Daedalus warned his son not to fly too close to the sun, nor too close to the sea. Overcome by the giddiness that flying lent him, Icarus soared through the sky curiously, but in the process he came too close to the sun, which melted the wax. Icarus kept flapping his wings but soon realized that he had no feathers left and that he was only flapping his bare arms. And so, Icarus fell into the sea in the area which bears his name, the Icarian Sea near Icaria, an island southwest of Samos.
Hellenistic writers who gave philosophical knowledge underpinnings to the myth also preferred more realistic variants, in which the escape from Crete was actually by boat, provided by Pasiphaë, for which Daedalus invented the first sails, to outstrip Minos' pursuing galleys, and that Icarus fell overboard en route to Sicily and drowned. Heracles erected a tomb for him
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icarus_(mythology)

其他網路參考資料
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/latin/ovid/trans/Metamorph8.htm#482327661

 
Icarus in Art

Lord Frederic Leighton’s Daedalus and Icarus
http://www.suite101.com/view_image.cfm/1436784

Herbert James Draper’s The Lament for Icarus
http://www.suite101.com/view_image.cfm/1436792

Odilon Redon’s The Fall of Icarus
In the curious and surreal world of French Symbolist artist Odilon Redon, Icarus appears to be the embodiment of the mind of Daedalus. There is only a face of Icarus surrounded by wings with Daedalus guiding him from behind. Yet beyond Daedalus is the even greater power of the sun, which will of course lure Icarus upward and cause his ultimate death.