Kathy With a Yellow Dress 1951

Henri Matisse made "Kathy With a Yellow Dress" in 1951, and it’s like he’s having a conversation with the paint. Look at the blues in the background, how they aren't just flat, but worked into existence. The texture is so present here. You can practically feel the push and pull of the brush. The paint isn’t trying to hide; it’s thick in some spots, almost like frosting, and thin in others, letting the canvas breathe. That black line drawing the face has a beautiful confidence to it, all suggestive and unfinished. It's the linchpin between abstraction and figuration in the painting. It's like Matisse is saying, "Here’s what I see, now you see it too." Matisse always had a way of making something new out of the familiar. This piece reminds me a bit of some of Picasso’s portraits, that same playful distortion of form, but with Matisse’s signature love of color taking center stage. And isn’t that what art’s all about, just a bunch of folks riffing off each other across time?