An underestimated art: the paper cut

Okay, calling my paper cut in the picture above art may be presumptuous. I didn't use the scissors as an emotional medium of expression. The cut paper does not represent my thoughts and feelings. I would hardly pick up a recipient with it. My paper cut may not even claim to be technical, as it falls far behind the work of first-graders in terms of craftsmanship.

I made my first acquaintance with paper cutting at primary school. After a while, they were omnipresent. They hung on strings stretched through the classroom or on windows. The art of cutting became really exciting when a pair of zigzag scissors was free. Or when coloured paper was available. This primitive form of paper cutting characterised my image. For a long time, I didn't realise that it was also a serious craft, if not an art.

The silhouette as a magnum opus

Even great painters such as Henri Matisse used silhouettes in their art. When Matisse was diagnosed with cancer and had to undergo intestinal surgery, his physical condition suffered, but the illness gave his art a reprieve. Matisse returned to the essential and simple and began to draw with scissors, as he called them. He has these cuts coloured and arranges them on sheets of paper that are also coloured. He worked on them for two years before publishing 20 of these collages as illustrations in a book. "Jazz" is considered one of the most important artist's books of the 20th century.

In Switzerland too, paper-cutting, which is native to northern China, has a long tradition that goes beyond primary school handicrafts. What was first reserved for the upper classes found its way into rural areas in the 19th century. It was there, in the Pays d'Enhaut, that Johann Jakob Hauswirth began to cut alpine windlasses. The father of the popular silhouette documented everyday life in the Alps and many after him did the same. This is probably why I and many others associate paper cutting with folk crafts, with the "ideal world" - and not with art. Even art galleries rarely devote exhibitions to the topic and the art form is not taught at art colleges, as paper cutting is not considered to be very complex. It doesn't just seem to have an image problem for me.

Once a respected art form

This was not always the case. In the 18th century, Germany was gripped by an enthusiasm for so-called silhouette portraits. Even Goethe depicted his surroundings in the form of silhouettes. In the 19th century, especially during the Biedermeier period, paper cutting was part of the education of the daughters of the upper classes. However, paper and scissors were also used as an evening activity by the middle classes. In the art historical epoch of Art Nouveau, paper cutting even became an art form in its own right at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts, now the University of Applied Arts.

Contemporary artists show that paper cut-outs, which are considered bourgeois, can even be political. For example, the German artist and Beuys student Felix Droese became known worldwide in the early 1980s with his paper-cut installation "I killed Anne Francs". At this time, Germany was once again coming to terms with the consequences of National Socialist rule, which Droese addressed with his installation. Swiss artist Ursula Vögtlin-Breitgraf repeatedly explores the topic of justice in her delicate cuts, depicting asylum seekers and migrants. The silhouettes by Japanese artist Yuken Teruya seem almost poetic. He cuts filigree trees out of toilet paper rolls, as if he wanted to give the product back its natural origin.

The paper cut as an expression of the soul

Silhouettes can be a folk craft, a child's handicraft or simply a pastime with a surprise effect. But it can also be art. Although paper cutting no longer has the same status today as it did in the 19th century and is not recognised as an art form in its own right, it should not be dismissed as a primitive technique. Art is created in the mind of the artist, not the recipient. As Marc Chagall aptly said: "Art, more than anything else, seems to me to be a state of the soul." And this state can also be expressed through a paper cut. <p