Dix Danseuses VII 1925 - 1926

Henri Matisse made this drawing, Dix Danseuses VII, with what looks like a soft graphite pencil, and just look at the off-hand, easy confidence of the marks! There's a real tactile sense to the drawing, right? You can almost feel the give of the paper, the drag of the pencil, like he wasn’t trying to capture a photographic likeness of a dancer but instead trying to translate the feeling of movement onto paper. Check out the dancer’s tutu, it's all scribbled lines, and the marks look a little frantic, but they totally give you a sense of its frilly volume. What's amazing is how he manages to suggest so much with so little. I’m reminded of Picasso, and his line drawings – the same interest in distilling form down to its bare essentials, an elegant simplicity that belies the complexity of thought behind it. For both artists, drawing was a way of thinking, a process of discovery rather than just a means to an end. The image is more of an invitation than a statement.