Jazz

Henri Matisse, [translation of the artist's holograph

text by Monroe Wheeler]

Author
Matisse, Henri, 1869-1954

Date

1960

Publisher
R. Piper

Exhibition URL
www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/3408

The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition history—

from our founding in 1929 to the present—is
available online. It includes exhibition catalogues,
primary documents, installation views, and an
index of participating artists.

MoMA © 2016 The Museum of Modern Art

PRINTED FOR THE MEMBERS OF
THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART NEW YORK
R. PIPER & CO VERLAG MUNICH
yAt <

PUtA
U7

The Museum of Modern Art was honored in 1948 in receiving, as a gift of the artist, one of the 100 copies without text of
Matisse's portfolio »Jazz«. The complete set of plates has twice been exhibited at the Museum in 1948 and again in the
summer of 1960 when a series of jazz concerts was presented Thursday evenings in the Museum's sculpture garden.

With the gracious permission of E. T6riade the plates in this volume have been reproduced from the 1947 Paris publication
of Editions Verve. Of the twenty plates in the original portfolio, sixteen have been selected, with certain pages of
Henri Matisse's accompanying text. The publisher thanks Mr. Otto Stangl who placed the original Verve plates at his disposal
for these reproductions. Reproduction rights have been obtained from S. P. A. D. E. M., Paris and Cosmopress, Geneva.
The book has been produced by Thormann & Goetsch, Berlin.

Published by R. Piper & Co. Verlag, Munich. Piper-Bucherei Nr. 115. Printed in Germany. All rights reserved.
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 BY HENRI MATISSE

DRAWING WITH SCISSORS

To cut right into color makes me think of a sculptor's carving into stone. This book has been
conceived in this spirit.

HAPPINESS
To derive happiness from one's self, from a good day's work, from the clearing that it makes
in the fog that surrounds us. To think that all those who have succeeded, as they look back on
the difficulties of their start in life, exclaim with conviction, »Those were the good days!« For
most of them success has meant a prison, and the artist must never be a prisoner. Prisoner ? An
artist must never be a prisoner even of himself, a prisoner of a style, a prisoner of a reputa
tion, a prisoner of good fortune. Did not the Goncourt brothers tell us that Japanese artists
of the great period changed their names several times in their lifetimes? This pleases me:
they wanted to safeguard their liberties. 40
 The character of a face in a drawing depends not upon its various proportions but upon a
spiritual light which it reflects-so much so that two drawings of the same face may have the
same character though drawn in different proportions.
No leaf of a fig tree is identical with any other of its leaves, each has a form of its own but
they all proclaim: Fig tree!

JAZZ
The images, in vivid and violent tones, have resulted from crystallizations of memories of the
circus, popular tales, or of travel. I have added these pages of text to appease the simul
taneous reactions of my chromatic and rhythmic improvisations, which constitute a background
of sound which carries them, surrounds them and thus protects them in their particularities.

A MUSICIAN HAS SAID:

In art, truth begins when one no longer understands what one is doing, what one knows, and
until there remains in you an energy all the stronger because it is constrained, compressed and
repressed. One must present oneself with the greatest humility, all white, all pure, and candid,
41 the mind seemingly empty, with a spirit analogous to that of the communicant approaching
the Holy Table. Obviously, one must have one's accomplishments all behind one, and yet have
known how to keep one's instincts fresh.

THERE IS NO MADNESS IN MY CURVES

The plumb line in determining the vertical direction forms, with its opposite, the horizontal,
the draughtsman's points of the compass. Ingres used a plumb line. See in his studies of stand
ing figures this unerased line, which passes through the sternum and the inner ankle bone of
the leg which bears the weight. Around this fictive line the »arabesque« develops. I have
derived constant benefit from my use of the plumb line. There is something vertical in my
spirit. It helps me give my lines a precise direction and in my quick drawings I never indicate
a curve, for example, that of a branch in a landscape, without a consciousness of its relation
ship to the vertical. There is no madness in my curves.

TH E BOUQUET
Strolling in the garden, I pick flower after flower, gathering them in my arm, one after the
other, as I happen upon them. Back I go to the house with the thought of painting them.
Having rearranged them to my taste, what a disappointment. All their charm vanished with
my arranging. What has happened? Instead of an unconscious accumulation, as my taste led
me from flower to flower, now I have a willful arrangement, the result of reminiscences of
bouquets dead and gone leaving in my memory their bygone charm which I have instilled
into this new bouquet.
Renoir said to me: »When I have arranged a bouquet in order to paint it I go around to the
side that I have not looked at.«

Insofar as I have confidence in my hand when drawing, it is because, as I trained it to serve

me, I never let it dominate my sentiment. I sense very quickly, when it is paraphrasing some
thing, if there is any disaccord between us: between it and l-know-not-what in myself which
seems submissive to it. One's hand is only a prolongation of one's sensibility and intelligence.
The more supple it is, the more obedient. The servant must not become mistress.

NOTES
After having written: »He who dedicates himself, let him begin by cutting out his tongue.«
What need have I to employ another medium than my own? This time I have to present some
color plates in conditions as favourable as may be. To do this I must separate them by inter-
ludes of a different character. I concluded that my handwriting was most suitable for this
purpose. The unusual size of this writing seemed to me obligatory to keep it in decorative
proportion with the color plates.
Thus these pages serve only as an accompaniment to my colors, as asters may be helpful
in making up a bouquet of more important flowers. Thus their function is purely visual.
What can I write? I cannot fill these pages with fables of La Fontaine as I used to do when
I was a law clerk, in my amplified conclusions which no one ever reads in any case. Not
even the judge, and which are added only to use up a quantity of stamped paper in propor
tion to the importance of the case.
I can only offer some remarks, notes made in the course of my lifetime as a painter. I ask of
those who have the patience to read them that indulgence which is generally accorded to the
writings of painters.

Translation of the artist's holograph text by Monroe Wheeler

POSTSCRIPT

It was in 1939 that Henri Matisse declared that he was ready to design a cover for the first
number of the Verve series. Thus began his first work in collage. Nine years later he executed
the cover for the eighth issue of Verve, again with cut and pasted papers. This time he asked
me to obtain color sheets of printer's ink, to eliminate any possibility of color infidelity.
These covers prompted me to ask Matisse whether he would not like to illustrate a book
done in the same technique; that was in 1942. He set to work, attempting first to recreate one
of his recent paintings with pasted papers. This disappointed h.m and he did not go on with it.
In 1943, Matisse offered to design the cover for a new issue of Verve. He summoned Angele
Lamotte and myself to Cimiez and there showed us not only the cover for Verve Number
but also two large bright colored plates-The Clown and The Toboggan-which were to be
the first and last pages of »Jazz«. The »Jazz« cycle was born. The other pages for the book
were executed in Vence in the villa »Le Reve« where he had established himself. First he paint
ed large sheets in watercolor and fastened them to the wall of his studio. So brilliant were
they that I recall Matisse writing me that his doctor had ordered him not to enter the room
without wearing dark glasses.
Using a pair of scissors, he cut forms out of these colored sheets which he kept arranging and
combining until he had achieved a harmonious juxtaposition of pure colors. In the entire pro
cess he found it unnecessary to draw a single line. As he himself writes in his text for »Jazz«,
he drew with the scissors, cutting into the color as a sculptor cuts into stone. It was a historic
moment in modern art: Matisse had discovered a brilliant and successful new method of obtain
ing plastic effects as a painter.
To accompany these pictures, which recall the chromatic opulence of miniature painting, no
printing type seemed appropriate. So Matisse, harking back to the magnificent and pictu
resque calligraphy of the Middle Ages, wrote the text in his own hand.
The themes of the first plates derive from the circus, which is what he first had in mind. As the
work progressed, however, he noted an affinity between his chromatic picture-making and
musical improvisation and therefore called his book »Jazz«.

E.TERIADE
 U clow*. TH E CLOWN page 7
'/?Ai

U t-C^CjUA. THE CIRCUS page 9

ft
MONSIEUR LOYAL page 11

fa
'U S W e'Sfc/t^sTif. THE NIGHTMARE OF THE WHITE ELEPHANT page 13
6/iCMC.
48
 U.
' ea^/cn^- THE HORSE, THE EQU ESTRIEN N E AN D TH E CLOWN page 15

U.&*i<. THE WOLF page 17

I CARU S page 19
J CM<.

A£? PI E R ROT'S FU N E RAL page 21

Ticket.
49
( CoAoH%

Claw I page 25

THE SWORD SWALLOWER page 27

TH E COWBOY
 £ C<sy\,cci^x^ page 31
TH E KN I FE-TH ROWE R
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THE LAGOON page 33

It ty\

THE TOBOGGAN page 35

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U. ClMtC*i DESTI NY Back cover

51
ART IN THE PI PER-BOCH E RE I

PAU L KLE E • Vogel-Begegnung • 16 farbige Blatter • EinfOhrung v. Gotthard Jedlicka • Band 150

LYONEL FEININGER - Aquarelle • 16 Farbtafeln • EinfOhrung v. Alfred Hentzen • Band 124

ERNSTLUDWIGKIRCHNER. Farbige Graphite • 16 Farbtafeln • EinfOhrung v. Erhard Gopel • Band

PI C AS S O • 46 Lithographien • EinfOhrung v. Kurt Kusenberg • Band 64

MARC CHAGALL • Arabische Ndchte • 26 Lithographien • EinfOhrung v. Kurt Moldovan

H E N RY MOO RE • Katakomben • 45 Zeichnungen • EinfOhrung v. H. Th. Flemming • Band 102

E M I L N O LD E • Aquarelle 16 Farbtafeln • EinfOhrung von GOnter Busch • Band 105

FR AN Z M ARC • Botschaften an den Prinzen Jussuff • 16 Aquarelle • EinfOhrung v. G. Schmidt • Band 75

MAX BECKMANN DER M A L E R • 46 Abbildungen • EinfOhrung v. Erhard Gopel • Band 116

E R N ST Wl LH E LM N AY • Aquarelle • 16 Farbtafeln • EinfOhrung v. Fritz Usinger • Band 90

FRITZWINTER - TriebkrOfte der Erde . 16 Farbtafeln • EinfOhrung v. Werner Haftmann • Band 114

The above volumes of the Piper-BOcherei are published in German by

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