The exhibition was funded in part by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture and the County of San Diego Community Enhancement Program.
A Mingei International documentary publication accompanied the exhibition and included 70 color and 10 black and white photographs and writing by Jackie Matisse, Martha Longenecker, Leslie Vallhonrat, Rebecca Rickman, Marie-Louise Von Plessen, Anne d’Harnoncourt, Niki de Saint Phalle, Merce Cunningham, Ecke Bonk and Molly Nesbit. A Mingei International documentary videotape of the exhibition was produced in 2001.
The granddaughter of Henri Matisse, Jackie Matisse was born in Paris and grew up there and in New York in a household in which art was part of daily life. Educated at the Sorbonne, she had no formal training in art but gained considerable experience from 1959 until 1968, helping her stepfather Marcel Duchamp to assemble his Boite-en-Valise (portable museum). Following Duchamp’s death, she discovered her own vocation. An introduction to the polymorphous, self-transforming work of artists Jean Tinguely and the French New Realists and the purchase of a 22-foot kite in a small box – her “Pandora’s Box,” encouraged her interest in kites and tails. Matisse is one of seven artists to sign the international _Art Volant_ (Flying Art) Manifesto.
The primary, simple kite is a vehicle that speaks of the joining of the spirit and the physical. Kites then are tools, mediums of expression in space, meditations on space, structures and surfaces, colors and forms interacting . . . visual, aural, tactile. The kite’s flying line connects the human hand and mind with the elements. Kites offer artists unparalleled opportunity to play, to explore, to experiment, manipulating scale and distance, making an immense space visible, unlocking the imagination.
Matisse’s kites and tails are made of ordinary materials – aluminum, rayon, cellophane, crepe paper and spinnaker cloth. Matisse launches kites and tails under water as well as in the air. Others of her kite tails are created for indoor use. Whether revolving on wires or trapped in bottles, they still evoke the feeling of movement.
Integral parts of the exhibition were two films _“Sur Le Dos du Reve" _(“Trailing a Dream”) produced by the Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou, Paris (1985) and “Sea Tails,” a performance installation also by Centre Georges Pompidou (1984). Both were collaborations by Jackie Matisse (kites), Molly Davies (camera) and David Tudor (music). Traditional kites of China, India, Japan and Thailand from Mingei International’s permanent collection were, also, on exhibition in two adjacent galleries.
Jackie Matisse installed her exhibition and spoke at Director’s Circle and Members’ receptions opening the exhibition. She returned to San Diego to fly her kites at Mariner’s Point on November 24 with Museum staff, members and friends and to be guest of honor for a reception at the Museum hosted by Air France.
Japanese master kite maker Nobuhiko Yoshizumi constructed kites in the traditional Edo style in the Museum’s Theater Gallery from October 7-11. Contemporary artist Gregory Burns painted Mr. Yoshizumi’s kites in this joint demonstration. The event was a collaboration with the Drachen Foundation, a non-profit kite research and study center in Seattle.