Art and science: Henri Matisse at CAS

Henri Matisse had seen better days by the time he started work on his illustrated book Jazz. His wife had divorced him. The Second World War was raging in Europe. And, after an operation for cancer, the artist found himself wheelchair-bound and in intense pain. It was in this context that Matisse turned to … a pair of scissors.

He deftly cut shapes out of colored cardboard – an artistic process in which he “cut into the color”, as he put it. In doing so, he created a work that remains one of his best-known to this day. He also birthed a new visual idiom that would have a profound influence on subsequent creative artists.

Jazz is currently on display at LMU’s Center for Advanced Studies (CAS) . The volume was published in 1947 as a limited edition of only 100 copies. Copy no. 97, autographed by Matisse, is on show at CAS.

The exhibition was made possible by CAS’s long-standing cooperation with the Franz Marc Museum, which owns the work, and its previous Director Dr. Cathrin Klingsöhr-Leroy, who curated the exhibition. Ever since its inception, CAS has hosted alternating annual exhibitions as a forum for dialogue between science and art. In the meantime, notes Managing Director Dr. Annette Meyer, art has become an integral part of interdisciplinary work at the CAS.

Within the framework of CAS’s interdisciplinary research focus, literary scholar Professor Carlos Spoerhase is currently addressing issues relating to scales and scaling. “The impressive dimensions of the Matisse book are fascinating,” he says. “This raises the question of what to do with such a huge volume? We can neither carry it around with us, nor can we sit down and read it. It has to be lying on a table and must be viewed from above. From this, we see that scale is a way of dealing with objets d’art.”

Jazz was published as an album with no text, but also as a limited edition in book form containing handwritten texts by the artist himself. Comparison of the two illustrates how Matisse made use of handwriting. “The writing has its own meaning, its own form of artistic expression,” Spoerhase argues, recalling that Matisse referred to himself as a “juggler” who keeps two balls – writing and imagery – in the air.

Inspirational encounters

The bond between art and science together is fundamental to the conception underpinning exhibitions at CAS. “We establish matching pairs of artists and researchers,” says Lena Bouman, who works at the Center. The concept, she adds, has been very well received by academics: “It is wonderful to see the chemistry working: Both sides cross-pollinate each other’s work, sometimes leading to new and lasting connections.”

Ena Oppenheimer is one of those who have experienced what this means. In the 2023/24 winter semester, she exhibited “Black Holes and Wishing Machines” at CAS. Her work concerns itself with forms, and with the question of what distinguishes that which is alive from that which is not. “Art and science have a lot in common: They see the world through the inquisitive eyes of the explorer.” Oppenheimer’s own collaboration with scientists has developed and grown over the years. “The resultant encounters with topics, some of which I work on in a singularly intuitive way, are thrilling.” They also spawn new projects: In cooperation with astrophysicist Andreas Burkert, for example, she has also created the exhibition “Dark Matter – The Invisible”.

Mathematician Dr. Ingmar Saberi introduced the CAS exhibition. In his address, he emphasized how precious shared dialogue is to him: “Whenever we join together in pondering open questions, we step into realms that were not there before, and we experience things that no one brought with them, that no one could even have expected: Indeed, they come into being only because we are talking. Everyone is changed when they come back from this journey: We are different, we think differently about the world.”

Discussion about Matisse’s volume

Carlos Spoerhase sees the debate surrounding Matisse’s illustrated book as “very productive”. On 29 January, he will take part in a panel debate at CAS about the context in which the book took shape. “It will be an interesting conversation between art history and literary scholarship,” he says. “The Matisse album is a fantastic project. You need different perspectives to do justice to it and to understand why it is one of the most remarkable books in existence.”

Art at CAS

Panel Discussion: Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Künstlerbuchs Jazz von Matisse (in German)

Henri Matisse at CAS: More about the exhibtion

Art at CAS: Past Exhibitions

Ena Oppenheimer at CAS: Black Holes and Wishing Machines

Research at CAS

Research focus: Scales