ITHACA, N.Y.- The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art presents Matisse's Jazz, on view through October 2. Henri Matisse (1869–1954) designed a number of special-edition books, the most important being Jazz, published in Paris in 1947 by Efstratios Tériade, which combined colored cutouts and a poetic essay on art in Matisse’s own handwriting. The Johnson Museum’s edition of Jazz is one of one hundred portfolio copies issued unbound and without the text, which makes it possible to re-create, on a smaller scale, the effect of how Matisse composed the cutouts from his sickbed by directing his nurse to pin them to the wall like a mural.

The dominant themes of the twenty works created for Jazz are the circus and the theater. It is thought that Matisse originally intended to call the book Circus, but was persuaded by Tériade to rename it. Whatever the reason for the name change, the experimental, improvisational nature of the Jazz compositions, with their exuberant colors, swooping arabesques, and staccato rhythms, are certainly worthy of the name.

This masterpiece of twentieth-century art was given to the Museum by Bruce Allyn Eissner, Class of 1965, and Judith Pick Eissner.