Matisse From The Tate Modern And Mo Ma

Free and Open to the Public - SEATING IS LIMITED In the late 1940s, when ill health first prevented Matisse from painting, he used cut paper and scissors to introduce a new art medium that would become known as a cut-out. Matisse would cut painted sheets of paper into forms of varying shapes and sizes which he arranged into compositions that were striking for their melding of finish and process, fine art and decoration, drawing and color. Phil Grabsky’s film follows from its inception the exhibition Henri Matisse: The Cut Outs, a groundbreaking reassessment of this important body of work organized by Tate Modern and the Museum of Modern Art, where it just closed after record attendance. The most extensive presentation ever mounted, the exhibition included approximately 100 cut-outs—including two loans from the Menil Collection. Audiences are invited to enjoy an intimate, behind-the-scenes documentary about this acclaimed exhibition with contributions from people who knew Matisse and experts such as curators, historians, and Tate director Nicholas Serota and MoMA director Glenn D. Lowry. Plus there are breathtaking, specially commissioned performances by Royal Ballet principal dancer Zenaida Yanowsky and jazz musician Courtney Pine. Acclaimed British actor Simon Russell Beale brings insight and emotion to the words of Henri Matisse himself, while actor Rupert Young narrates. The film is presented in conjunction with the Menil Collection exhibition Becoming Modern: Nineteenth-Century French Drawings from The Morgan Library & Museum and The Menil Collection (Feb. 27 – June 14, 2015). The film will be shown in the museum’s foyer. Admission is free.