Itâs a story of art inspiring art inspiring art. Henrà Matisseâs joyful paper compositions, which the artist began making in the 1940s with painted paper and a pair of scissors, inform an afternoon performance at the Mills College Art Museum featuring choreographer Molissa Fenley, poet Bob Holman and composer Keith Patchel.
Where to start untangling this web of associations? Letâs begin with Holman, founder of New Yorkâs Bowery Poetry Club and the author of 17 poetry collections. Inspired by Matisseâs work, he wrote the 2017 chapbook The Cutouts (Matisse), poetic descriptions of and extrapolations from the artistâs final years of work.
Then, composer Patchel set the suite of poems to music, creating a âsongspielâ that includes lines like âsnip, snipâ and âTime for lunch, Henri / So eat your breakfast / Blue apple / Green coffee / Yellow fingers,â sometimes sung, sometimes spoken, to a background of spare piano and strings.
Enter Fenley (a Mills alum), a choreographer, performer and longtime Holman collaborator, to bring the whole thing into three-dimensional, bodily space. In an earlier performance of The Cut-Outs at Stanfordâs Anderson Collection, Fenley embodied the angular poses of the figures in Matisseâs Jazz suite, freeing them from their static stances with graceful, sweeping gestures.
And as a bonus to all this live, person-to-person transmission of Matisseâs works, the collegeâs own Jazz Suite prints will be on display in Slide Space 123 Gallery, just across the courtyard from the museum, on view March 13â15. âSarah Hotchkiss
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