Henri Matisse: Drawing with Scissors亨利·马蒂斯：用剪刀作画

They were dismissed as paper jokes， the pictorial maunderings of an old man—but the dazzlingly bright cutouts1 Matisse made in his last decade show a period of vitality and radical reinvention.

马蒂斯在生命最后十年创作的剪纸作品在当时颇受轻视，人们认为那是拿纸剪着玩，不过是耄耋老人用图画形式在絮絮叨叨。而事实上，这些作品色彩明亮，令人叹为观止，足以看出马蒂斯在那段时期爆发出蓬勃的生命力，对传统进行了彻底的颠覆。

At the start of the second world war， Henri Matisse found himself， for the first time in his life， confronted by an empty studio. France declared war in September and was swiftly invaded， defeated and occupied by German forces. Matisse fell gravely ill and spent much of the next two years struggling to survive recurrent crises that threatened his life. In 1943， when German armies poured down through France to meet allied forces fighting their way up through Italy， Matisse was a bedridden invalid2， living in a war zone in south-east France with German troops in his basement and allied shells exploding in the garden.

二战爆发初期，马蒂斯的工作室空空如也，没有一件作品，这是他生平第一次遇到这种情况。同年九月，法国参战，旋即遭到入侵，随即战败，迅速被德军占领。此时，马蒂斯身患重疾，之后的两年，病情反复，几度病危，他大部分时间都在经历这样的煎熬。1943年，德国大军横贯法国大陆，与穿过意大利奋力一搏的盟军短兵相接。彼时，马蒂斯缠绵病榻，住在法国东南部的一个战区，寓所地窖中住着德军，盟军发射过来的炮弹就在花园爆炸。

It was at this point that he cut a man out of white paper， a drooping pinheaded figure， all sagging limbs and blazing red heart， mounted on a black ground with bombs detonating around him. He called it The Fall of Icarus， after the ancient Greek who fell to his death because he had tried to fly too near the sun， but Matisse’s Icarus marked a beginning， not an end. It turned out to be the first step in a process of radical reinvention that would see him abandon oil paints altogether in favour of new techniques based on cut and painted paper. His doctors had given him， at most， three years to live after an intestinal operation in 1941. His mobility from then on was minimal and his strength greatly diminished， but the work he produced in his final decade suggests inexhaustible imaginative power and vitality. He made an astonishing number of increasingly ambitious cutpaper compositions， setting up a production line after the war in what he called his factory in Nice， where studio assistants covered sheets of paper with gouache mixed to his own direction in colours almost blindingly bright. He said he was drawing with scissors， cutting directly into colour， abolishing the conflicts—between colour and line， emotion and execution3 —that had slowed him down all his life. “I do it in self-defence，” he said sadly， when Louis Aragon asked how work of such brilliant， reckless exuberance could have emerged from the darkest days of the war.

正是在这一阶段，马蒂斯在白纸上剪出一个人形：耷拉着小脑袋，四肢下垂，还有一颗火红的心。小人嵌在黑色背景中，周围是引爆的炸弹。马蒂斯以古希腊神话故事《伊卡洛斯的坠落》为这幅画命名——伊卡洛斯因为飞近太阳而坠亡。不过与这个传说不同，马蒂斯的《伊卡洛斯》象征的不是终结，而是开端。马蒂斯最后完全放弃油画，转向将裁剪和涂色纸相结合的创新手法，由此开启一段彻底的革新之旅，而这幅作品就是他迈出的第一步。1941年，马蒂斯接受了一次肠道手术，医生当时断言他活不过三年。虽然手术后行动能力大为受限，体力严重下降，但马蒂斯在生命最后十年间的创作表明，他的想象力和生命力永不枯竭。他的剪纸作品规模越发宏大，而且数量惊人。二战结束后，马蒂斯在尼斯设立专门的生产线（他称其为自己的工厂），工作室助手按照他对色彩的要求，将不同颜色的水粉混合，调制出近乎炫目的亮色，把一张张纸涂满。马蒂斯说过，他是用剪刀在作画，通过直接裁剪色彩，使得色彩与线条的对立、激情与创作手法的冲突，都不复存在，而那些对立冲突一辈子都在拖慢他的创作。著名诗人路易·阿拉贡曾经问他，这样明亮鲜活、生机勃勃的作品为何会诞生于战时最黑暗的日子，马蒂斯不无伤感地说：“我是在自卫。”

From the summer of 1946， a steady stream of images invaded Matisse’s walls， starting with the bedroom of his Paris flat where he cut a swallow out of white writing paper to cover up a scuffmark4 on the shabby brownish wallpaper. It was succeeded by a fish， then a second and a third， until gradually the whole width of the wall was submerged under a swell of marine life surfacing from buried memories of a trip to Tahiti made 16 years earlier. Seabirds， fish， shells， sharks， strands and curlicues of seaweed eventually covered two walls （later transposed by a resourceful young textile-maker， Zika Ascher， on to two silkscreen panels， Oceania， the Sea and Oceania， the Sky）.

从1946年夏天开始，各种图样源源不断地出现在马蒂斯的墙上。先是在他巴黎公寓的卧室墙上，一只白色信纸剪成的燕子盖住了破旧的褐色墙纸上一处磨损痕迹，后来出现了一条鱼，接着又有了第二条鱼、第三条鱼。慢慢地，整面墙都贴满了游弋的海洋生物，这些海洋生物是从16年前塔希提岛之旅的尘封记忆中浮现出来的。到最后，海鸟、鱼类、贝壳、鲨鱼、海带、海藻整整覆盖了两面墙（年轻的纺织品制造商齐卡·阿舍尔心思活络，后来将这些剪纸移到了两块丝网印刷面板上，成为《大洋洲，海洋》和《大洋洲，天空》两幅作品）。

They were followed by a tidal surge of cutouts flooding Matisse’s interiors， sweeping round corners and over doorways， immersing fixtures and fittings5 under successive waves of fruit and foliage， acrobats， dancers and swimmers diving， floating and swooping round the rooms from floor to ceiling. Images took over all available space， commandeering salons， dining rooms， bedrooms and studios wherever Matisse went from his Parisian apartment to the little suburban house he rented on the outskirts of Vence in wartime. The stained-glass windows for the chapel at Vence—a project that took Matisse four years to complete at the height of his powers—were designed from his bed entirely in cut and coloured paper.

这之后，大量剪纸贴满马蒂斯的房间，墙角周围和门廊上方布满剪纸，家具四周也围绕着一波又一波的剪纸作品，有水果和枝叶、杂技演员、舞者，还有或跳水、或漂浮、或俯冲的泳者，上至天花板，下至地面，布满各个房间。马蒂斯所到之处，不论是巴黎的公寓还是二战期间他在旺斯郊区租的小房子，在客厅、餐厅、卧室、工作室，剪纸图样占据了所有能贴剪纸的地方。马蒂斯在其艺术创作巅峰时期曾花四年时间修建了旺斯礼拜堂，教堂的彩色玻璃窗就出自他卧床期间仅用彩纸进行裁剪的设计。

Matisse grew old but his work did not. People who visited him in his late 70s and early 80s described him sitting up against his pillows with scissors and paper， twisting and turning the coloured sheets beneath his blades to release a steady stream of fragile spiralling shapes that floated down to subside6 on the bedspread below like flotsam washed up by the sea. The paper scraps were retrieved， pieced together and meticulously pinned in place according to the artist’s instructions. “He knew what he was looking for，” said one of his assistants， “but we didn’t.” The hypnotic7 quality of the whole operation reduced those who watched it to stupefied silence， among them Picasso， who came regularly with his girlfriend to check up on his old rival. What baffled Picasso and enchanted his companion was the streamlined ease， speed and cutting-edge modernity of the entire procedure.