The dancer 1918

Gustav Klimt painted ‘The Dancer’ with oils, and what jumps out is how he's flattened everything into a decorative surface. It's like he's thinking of painting as this puzzle of shapes and colours, more than trying to trick us into seeing real life. I can almost feel Klimt building up the layers, especially in her dress, where he uses these tiny, almost mosaic-like brushstrokes. There’s this one green and black shape near her left leg – is it a shadow? A fold? Who knows! But that ambiguity makes it zing. The way he’s put it right next to the white stocking is *chef's kiss*. The flowers behind her kind of explode, like his painting is always pushing at the edges of the canvas. He kind of reminds me of Matisse, someone else who loved to play with pattern and push what painting can do. You can keep looking at it and discovering new things, and isn’t that what art is all about?