Icarus

A simple black silhouette of a figure, a small red dot at its heart, tumbles through a deep blue sky scattered with bursts of bright yellow stars. Henri Matisse made Icarus from cut and pasted paper, the technique he turned to in old age when illness kept him from the easel, calling it 'drawing with scissors.' Published in his book Jazz, it distills the myth of the falling boy into pure color and shape. Now in Scotland, it shows the aged master's late genius - profound feeling conveyed with the utmost economy of flat color and form.