Rhythmic landscape on Lake Geneva 1908

Ferdinand Hodler made this rhythmic landscape on Lake Geneva using oil paint. The light blue of the water meets the light blue of the sky in such a way that you get the sense of a really specific moment, a hazy day. The clouds are like big fluffy thought bubbles. Hodler wasn’t trying to trick us into thinking we are looking at a real lake, but instead he's showing us how water, sky, and land can be translated into something else. The most fascinating thing is the color. I see horizontal bands of blues, yellows and greens, all reflecting off one another. Then there's this ochre band of mountains in the background. It makes me think of someone like Agnes Martin, whose work also uses deceptively simple geometries to convey a vast feeling of space. The way that Hodler layers the paint is also really important; it almost feels like he's building up the landscape one thin layer at a time.