Girl Reading, Vase of Flowers 1922

Henri Matisse painted this scene of a girl reading with a vase of flowers, and what strikes me is the directness, like he's figuring it out as he goes along. Look at the tabletop, that blue is laid on kind of thick, almost like frosting, you can see the brushstrokes moving in all directions. There's no attempt to hide the process. And it’s not just about representation, right? I mean, the color blue is more like a stand-in for blueness, it’s a feeling as much as a color. Then there’s the way the stripes in the background don’t quite line up, like he's saying, “Hey, this is a painting, not a window.” Matisse reminds me of Bonnard, that same love of domestic spaces. But where Bonnard dissolves into atmosphere, Matisse stays grounded in the object, the thingness of things. It’s all so beautifully unresolved, like a question mark hanging in the air.