One must occasionally endure the indignity of a virtual queue, and for the Art Institute’s recent gathering of Matisse’s Jazz plates, I found myself waiting among the Michigan Avenue crowds. Gallery 124 has been transformed into a rhythmic sanctuary, finally displaying the 1948 acquisition in its complete, twenty plate glory.

What we see in Rhythms in Color is Matisse at his most defiant. Here is a man in his seventies, physically compromised by surgery and tethered to a chair, yet inventing an entirely new vernacular. The cut-out is not a fallback for the infirm. It is a conceptual coup. He famously called it drawing with color, and the intellectual rigor behind that statement is palpable. He finally collapsed the distinction between line and hue. No longer is color a mere passenger within an outline. The color is the form.

The exhibition curates this beautifully by placing the livre d'artiste alongside sculptures and textiles that hint at his lifelong obsession with simplification. One cannot look at Icarus or The Knife Thrower without acknowledging the ghost of the 1940s. While the palette suggests the joy of a Parisian music hall, there is a jaggedness to the edges that betrays the era.

The curators rightly suggest these are not just whimsical circus scenes. There is a syncopation here, a rhythmic violence that mirrors the very jazz music he named the series after. It is improvisational, yes, but it is anchored by a profound structural anxiety.

I found the inclusion of his original handwritten text particularly moving, though I suspect most visitors were too busy taking selfies with The Horse, the Rider, and the Clown to actually read it. It is a rare moment of vulnerability from a master who usually kept his clinical detachment quite polished.

If you go, try to ignore the workshops in the adjacent halls. Focus instead on the pochoir technique. The way the gouache is hand stenciled onto the paper gives it a saturated depth that digital screens simply cannot replicate. It is a completion, not a starting point. And for once, the Art Institute has given it the space it deserves. Just join that virtual line the moment you arrive. The golden ratio waits for no one.