Le Luxe (I) 1907

Henri Matisse made "Le Luxe (I)" with oil on canvas, and looking at the surface, you can tell that painting was a real process for him, a kind of searching. There's a looseness here, an unpretentious materiality that is striking. The paint isn't trying to hide itself, it's not trying to trick you into thinking it's something else. Look at the woman standing, the darkest outlines of her body, and how that same dark paint is used to define the rocks, the way it bleeds into the ochre of the ground. You get a sense that the painting is built up from discrete marks. The nude crouching down is fascinating. See how she seems to almost disappear into the canvas? How the blue paint outlines her, making her solid. Matisse reminds me of Philip Guston, they both allow their paintings to be awkward and unresolved. It's like they're saying, "Here it is, the world is messy, and that's okay."