Étude pour La Dormeuse 1939

Henri Matisse drew this study for 'La Dormeuse' with charcoal, and I love how he gets right to it, capturing a sleeper in media res. I think of it as a process, like a jazz riff, with lines finding form spontaneously. Check out the materiality of the thing: the smudgy charcoal textures, the weight of the dark shading, the ghostlike traces of erased lines. His touch isn't precious, it's searching. You can almost feel Matisse coaxing the shapes from the page, rubbing and layering the charcoal to define the volumes of the body. It’s especially evident where the forearm rests. In the end, Matisse leaves us with something unresolved. Like a half-remembered dream. Think about Guston, or Twombly. It’s a good reminder that art doesn’t need to be perfect, just honest. It embraces ambiguity.