Creative – Page 22 – The Consulting Artist

Cut Out Creativity – Henri Matisse

Excellence doesn’t need to be complicated. Tate Modern are hosting an exhibition of Matisse’s cut outs this year. Would you like to see it with me?

Almost two and a half years ago, I ran a guest blog series on here called Heroes. In all there were a dozen contributions to the series, many of them still get searched for and read, and this one about Mrs Van Gogh is my personal favourite.

The most read post in the series is one about the inspirational artist, Henri Matisse, and it is to him I return today.

Cut Out Creativity

As he aged Matisse became ill and could no longer paint. You could forgive him for calling it a day and sitting back to admire his vast catalogue of work in his twilight years. And you wouldn’t need to.

Confined to his bed, Matisse continued to create great art using cut outs. Some of his most famous and stunning work was created in this final phase of his life.

The cut out works are often very large. The Snail, shown here, is almost three metres square. It’s part of the Tate collection and I think it’s simply beautiful. This tiny image doesn’t begin to do the picture justice. What it shows me is that excellence doesn’t need to be complicated.

Adaptability

I love Matisse’s work. And what I love most of all is his adaptability. I imagine him thinking, ‘Can’t get out of bed to paint anymore? No problem, let’s make cutouts. I can design and cut them and my team can arrange the pieces just so’. Matisse’s drive to adapt in the face of adversity is inspiring, what a creative leader.

What heroics could you and your team achieve with a little of Matisse’s adaptability?

This One’s For You

Tate Modern is running a major exhibition of Matisse’s work this year, starting in April and running through to September. I’m excited about this and intend to visit it often, and here’s where you come in. My membership at Tate is a plus three, so if you would like, we can visit this exhibition together – with you as my guests. Would you like to join me? If you would – please just add a comment to this post, and we will work on the dates later.

Facilitation Jam – 2014

Are you free on Friday 6th and Saturday 7th June? If you are – you might like to read on. If you are not – then maybe enjoy this excellent Slideshare on social business by Paul Taylor instead? It’s very good.

Anyway – back to the 6th and 7th of June…

Would you like the opportunity to spend a couple of days experimenting and honing your facilitation skills? A few of us are having a co-created facilitation jam session on Friday 6th June and the morning of Saturday 7th June 2014.

So far, the following people have signed up: Martin Couzins, Sukh Pabial, Meg Peppin, Doug Shaw, Tash Stallard, and Kev Wyke. A few others are mulling it over, and we’d like to open up the chance for others to play too. Would you like to take part?

The event will be quite free flowing with no one person responsible for leading the day. Instead we invite you to take turns to prepare and run a session during the event and receive immediate feedback on your ideas from your colleagues. You may be looking to improve on some existing methods you use – you may want to try something completely new. However you choose to play, it’s up to you.

This is being run as a not for profit event, you only pay to cover costs. The event will take place in historic Greenwich, London and we want to make it residential so we have some social time together as well. The cost for the space we need to jam on both days, plus overnight accommodation and breakfast on Saturday morning is £160 plus VAT per person. We hope you can join us for a couple of days of useful, challenging fun.

If you are free and would like to take part, please get in touch with anyone who is going for more information on how to pay and play.

Meantime – here is a little video I made as I reflected on the last session we had, back in January 2013.

Mood Lighting

Mervyn Dinnen and I had a wander round the Sensing Spaces exhibition at The Royal Academy this week. The exhibition, which is as much if not more about the space you occupy and the mood that emerges from that occupation, rather than art you look at, feels a little outside the Royal Academy’s comfort zone. You are encouraged to move around the exhibition in any direction you please, so we started with an ascent to the ceiling via an enclosed series of ramps and spiral staircases.

On top of the platform we admired the ceiling close up, and (mostly) kept our hands off the historical architecture.

We moved round the exhibition drifting through various degrees of light and shade, standing on and touching different surfaces (no keep off signs this time), occupying different spaces.

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We continued our wander around and afterwards, stopped for a coffee (him) and a beer (me). As we spoke about the exhibition, Mervyn told me that one of the biggest impacts he observed while walking around, was how the mood of our conversation altered depending on the space we occupied. He was right. Earlier on, as we ascended to the ceiling we talked optimistically and enthusiastically in the bright open space. Our conversation became playful as we moved through a brightly coloured environment made of plastic straws. Here – you are given the option to play with the straws and integrate your work into a mass of colour. We drifted through darker spaces too, and just as the light dimmed so did the volume and tone of our conversation.

I enjoyed catching up with Mervyn, and the exhibition has caused me to think on about the spaces in which we work and play, and the extent to which their design can and does affect us. The exhibition runs until April 6th and if you find yourself in London with an hour or two to spare before then, it’s well worth a visit.