The Beasts of the Sea 1950

Here's Matisse, hacking up the joint with paper and scissors. What I see is a dance of shapes, a symphony of blues, greens, yellows, blacks, pinks, and whites. It's not paint, but these cut-outs have a painterly quality. I imagine Matisse, snipping away, piecing together these vertical stacks. What's he thinking? Maybe he's diving into the depths of color, trying to capture the feeling of being underwater, the strange shapes of marine life. Is he lost in the process, letting the materials guide him? The composition shifts as he changes and re-arranges the paper cut-outs. Check out that black shape, arching and diving like a serpent. It echoes the squiggles on the right-hand stack, which evokes Joan Miró's biomorphic forms. It's a conversation, right? Matisse talking to Miró, to us, across time. Ultimately, this work is not about answers. It's about possibilities, different ways of seeing and feeling.