The Art Institute of Chicago | Chicago, IL
Adults $27, teens (14–17) $21, children free
To know Matisse is to know Jazz—or at least the vivid images that make up the book, which gathers some of his most iconic works of the 20th century. After a lifetime spent wrestling with the tension between color and line—a struggle that often seemed fruitless—an emergency surgery and the long, bedridden recovery that followed led Matisse to experiment with cut paper shapes, the very forms he is now synonymous with. The result of that creative breakthrough was Jazz, a book of 20 vibrant plates, now on display at The Art Institute of Chicago alongside several of his other pursuits in painting, printmaking, textiles and beyond.
While you may feel well-acquainted with Matisse’s work through pop culture osmosis—Icarus, for instance, emblazoned on the cover of The Body Keeps the Score, a trauma text that has achieved an unusual level of mainstream popularity—“Matisse's Jazz: Rhythms in Color” recontextualizes these familiar, often misread images. Icarus, for example, is not surrounded by stars but by bursting artillery shells, a subtle yet unsettling trace of fascist anxiety creeping into Matisse’s vision.
Jazz itself occupies only a small atrium within this multi-room exhibition. Elsewhere, the galleries open onto Matisse’s experiments across mediums: woodcuts, graphite sketches and lesser-known sculptures, each offering a different angle on his restless practice. The exhibition ultimately stands as a testament to the idea that life can begin at 70. As we watch other artists reinvent themselves in their so-called later years—Kim Gordon, or even David Bowie in his final creative chapter—it’s refreshing to encounter this same sense of possibility at the edge of age.
Still, the show doesn’t fully cohere. Jazz—arguably the gravitational center—feels slightly under-scaled relative to its cultural weight, and the surrounding works, while compelling, at times read more like satellites than a tightly woven narrative. It’s a rich and worthwhile exhibition, but one that stops just short of transcendence.
