According to the Matisse exhibit, in his later years he “turned his focus to a new medium: cut paper,” with the aid of scissors. This was probably a better choice than, say, a new medium of paper cuts, where you draw with the blood oozing from your fingers.

Also, painting with scissors is a better choice than running with them, though not nearly as clever a title for a book.

The exhibit includes a video that shows the notes Matisse wrote to accompany each piece of artwork in Jazz, but I forgot to learn French before going to the museum and thus had difficulty understanding them, although the occasional notation, such as “un grand voyage,” was within my grasp.

I learned that Edmond Vairel was hired to use pochoir (stencil) to create the images in the book from Matisse’s original work, which was aided by Lydia Delectorskaya, who painted the sheets of paper from which Matisse cut the shapes and composed the designs, apparently while bedridden, sort of like me writing my blogs from my recliner.