Male Speaker 1

Here again is Jay Fisher, Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Jay Fisher

Jazz is a marvelous book, certainly one of Matisse’s greatest efforts. And he worked with a wonderful publisher and editor. His name was Tériade, and Tériade had a way of working with books, which he felt brought out the best possible collaboration with an artist. He really expected the artist to come up with the subject for the book. He and Matisse were very interested in not doing a book about jazz as music, but kind of picking up the flavor and the movement and the color that jazz suggests. And instead of choosing an author that Matisse might have worked with, what Tériade frequently did, he asked his artist to write out the text himself. And so the text is written by Matisse and actually written out, we get the wonderful flow of Matisse’s penmanship. And in that Matisse talks about jazz music and he also talks about the circus, his mind really wanders over a number of topics that don’t specifically go to explaining the illustrations in the book, but sort of evoke the whole feeling of color and movement as you go through the book.

Male Speaker 1

To learn about Matisse’s return to the familiar subjects with his painting press the green button. Select the red button to hear Matisse describe his insatiable impulse to create. Press the yellow button to hear some French music.